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Calmire. Man and Nature. Sixth edition re- 
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On the Civic Relations. Being a third edi- 
tion of " Talks on Civics " rewritten from the 
catechetical into the expository form, and re- 
vised and enlarged. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Boston and New York 



ON THE 
CIVIC RELATIONS 



BY 



HENRY HOLT, A.B., LL.B., LL.D. 

Member of the New York Academy of Political Science, the Am.erican 

Political Science Association, and the America7t Economic 

Association ; Author o/"" Sturmsee : Man 

and Man" etc. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 

0DZ i!iiticr?ibe ^iti^^ Camliritige 

1907 



•f 



fLiSRARY of congress! 
Two Cooles Received j 
MA^ 13 190r 
Cooyrifrht Entry 



cuss 



COPY B. 



^^ 



COPYRIGHT 1907 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & CO. 

First Edition ( Third of " Talks on Civics ") printed May IQ07 



\L 



PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 

While this book is, in one sense, a third edition of 
my "Talks on Civics ", it is really, in many important 
differences and additions, almost a new work. Among 
the peculiarities, not to speak of the defects, under 
which the earlier editions labored, was the catechetical 
form, of which I expressed my divStrust in the first 
preface. That form was adopted largely because the 
work was aimed at very young pupils. Before it was 
finished, I became convinced, as stated in a note to 
the earlier editions, that the aim was not one suited 
either to the greatest possible usefulness of the book, 
or to the capacity of the author. Both in regard to the 
aim, and to the catechetical form, this conviction was 
supported by many readers, and in consequence I 
have rewritten the book. The rewriting of course has 
led to many differences of detail ; and the growth of my 
owm convictions, as well as the astonishing develop- 
ment during the past few years in many of the matters 
treated, and the increase of topics demanding treat- 
ment, have combined to make the work, as already 
stated, in many particulars a new one. So rapid has 
been the development in some particulars, as almost 
to render them unfit for treatment in a book, and to 
make it impossible to keep pace with them except in 
the daily and periodical press. Each proof and each 
revise has clamored for insertions, and I go to press 
neglecting important matter that has appeared since 
my copy, and also my revises, went to the printer. 
I must even beg the reader's charity for some incon- 

iii 



iv Preface to the Third Edition. 

sistencies that must have escaped me between matter 
coming after the original draft, and matter contained 
in it. 

Notwithstanding the space saved by doing away with 
question and answer, this edition is more than a hundred 
and fifty pages longer than the preceding one. The 
added matter contains its share of the sort of repeti- 
tions that were confessed, and I hope justified, in the 
preface to the first edition. Most of it relates to "the 
labor question", socialism and municipal trading, and 
will be found principally in Chapters XIX-XXII, and 
XXVIII-XXX. 

I confess, not quite without shame, to having, in the 
earlier editions, handled the first of those subjects very 
briefly, and with gloves; the excuse, such as it was, 
being that whatever good the book might do, would 
be put out of the reach of common-school pupils by 
"Labor" influences. Having come to reahze, however, 
before the book was finished, that it had grown unavail- 
able for such pupils, in this edition I have entirely 
abandoned the attempt to adapt it to them. Yet 
there may be places where enough of the earlier ten- 
derness for the juvenile mind has survived, to demand 
my humble apologies to the dignity of the under- 
graduate. But a much stronger reason for the changes 
regarding the subjects mentioned, was their growing 
importance. In the six years since the second edition 
was published, the "labor question" has become, not- 
withstanding the graft in corporations, the leading 
question of the time. I am sorry that my limits do 
not permit even a fuller treatment of it, but less sorry 
than I should be if I could not refer the reader for 
fuller information to so admirable a book as the ' ' Labor 
Problems" of Prof. T. S. Adams and Miss Helen L. 
Sumner. Despite the strange showings of figures which 
I have alluded to on page 252, and despite some other 
matters which I cannot endorse, Professor Adams's 
chapter on Strikes and Boycotts surpasses anything on 
the subject which I know. The book has appeared 
since the last edition of this one, and has done not a 



Preface to the Third Edition. v 

little to furnish me material for hope that this edition 
may be an improvement. 

What I have found to say regarding the right to stop 
work and the right to strike, tho not entirely novel, 
and tho somewhat anticipated even by court decisions, 
has nevertheless pla^yed so small a part as yet in dis- 
cussions of the subject, that I cannot help regarding it 
as well worth saying. I am also vain enough to hope 
that the additional matter regarding socialism may do 
a little to clear up in some minds that inevitably foggy 
subject, or at least to show why it is inevitably 

foggy- 

The book is of course ''second-hand": to write from 
original investigation in so many fields, would be impos- 
sible: for even if life were long enough, while an author 
would be investigating one department, those pre- 
viously gone over would grow beyond him. The utmost 
possible is the exercise of reasonable care and dis- 
crimination in choosing authorities. This I have striven 
for, but I have not made any attempt like those which 
I have sometimes been uncharitable enough to suspect 
in others, to make the book appear more learned than 
it is, by bothering the reader with citations of authori- 
ties for all the statements. 

Tho disliking excuses, I will allow myself the one 
afforded in this connection, for not having taken the 
trouble to hunt up the names of law cases when they 
were not given where I found the substance of the 
decisions. A book intended primarily for under- 
graduates and general readers, does not need details 
required only by the profession and investigators. One 
of the critics of an earlier edition was at the pains to 
inform his readers that its treatment of law topics 
can be of little use to the profession. It will also be 
of little use to students of Chinese. Perhaps, however, I 
may be excused for saying that other critics (I do not 
know whether of equal authority) have said that the 
book contained a good introduction to the study of the 
municipal law. Whether it did or not, this edition 
contains a better one, largely due to the friends named 



vi Preface to the Third Edition. 

below. I have also gleaned a few new points from 
Professor Burdick's "Essentials of Business Law." 

I am indebted for various valuable criticisms of the 
earlier editions to Professor Daniels, Judge Baldwin, 
and Messrs. Samuel Huntington and Ralph Curtis Ring- 
wait of the New York bar. 

My obligations to other writers not consulted for the 
earlier editions, are, I believe, all acknowledged in the 
body of the work. 

I am glad again to name Mr. Neu, and to express 
my continued obligation for his admirable proof-read- 
ing, and for help in the cross-references and index. 

I crave the reader's consideration for the reasons 
set forth in the preface to the first edition, why the 
work is a considerable departure from previous works 
in the same field. 

H. H. 
New York, 
March 29, 1907. 



FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST 

EDITION. 

(March i, 1901.) 

THE MOTIVES. 

This book was written in the hope of doing a Httle 
something to develop in young people the character of 
mind which is proof against political quackery — espe- 
cially the quackery which proposes immediate cures by 
legislation for the abiding ills resulting from human 
weakness and ignorance. Since the Civil War, America 
has been cursed by such proposals probably more* than 
any other country ever was. What beneficent institu- 
tions we have, have all been evolved through the long 
and painful struggles which have at the same time 
evolved character and morality. If Nature's ways are 
plain in anything, they are plain in showing that it is 
only for such prices that she yields such rewards. And 
yet of all our hard-bought institutions, there is scarcely 
one, from a stable currency down to the very right of 
accumulating property, that has lately escaped a strong 
attempt to overthrow it, and to substitute for it some 
invention of the moment — or rather some invention 
bearing a name of the moment, but being really a form 
of some protean error as old as history. 

As these errors all propose to get along faster than 
Evolution, they would of course be impossible to a mind 
habitually recognizing the law of Evolution. Yet that 
law has not even been named, so far as I can recall at 
the moment, in any of the American elementary books 

vii 



viii From the Preface to the First Edition. 

on civic subjects that I have been able to get hold of.* 
This may not in all cases be due to neglect, but some- 
times to the conviction that it is useless to present the 
subject to the young. My view is more hopeful, and 
this book is, perhaps more than anything else, an at- 
tempt to saturate young people's minds with the reali- 
zation that social institutions are evolutions, and there- 
fore (I) that they can no more be modified by laws or 
votes or any other manifestations of human will than 
plants or animals can ; but (II) that they can be modified 
as much as plants or animals can, tho only by the same 
means — careful study of their life-histories and habits, 
and cautious efforts in accordance with the proved con- 
ditions of their well-being; and (III) that they will be 
vitiated or destroyed by forced or ignorant treatment' 

This is why I have spent so much time over such 
topics as early land-tenure and the relations of status 
and contract — in short, over the archaeology of the sub- 
ject. I want to give the pupil a consciousness that en- 
during institutions are growths, and do not spring up 
responsive to any magician's wand, be it in the hands of 
Mr. Altgeld, Mr. Bryan, or even so good a man as Henry 
George — I want to accustom him, when any method is 
presented for his vote, to ask: Has this thing roots.'* 

A second motive for the book was to place before 
American youths at least one text -book that should not 
claim that our constitutions — state and national, present 
the final word of human wisdom. Perhaps the admission 
of notorious defects will bring upon the book charges of 
lack of patriotism, yet it is not written in a pessimistic 
spirit. The pessimist generally despairs because achieve- 
ments fall short of ideals: the wise man compares, 
rather, what he and his have achieved, with what others 
have achieved. Our government may not be the best, 
but we are too near the best to despair. But if our gov- 
ernment is ideally good already, why bother to teach 

* There is abundant illustration of Evolution in Mr. Fiske's 
" Civil Government in the United States ", but I believe the word 
is not even mentioned, perhaps because of the theological preju- 
dices prevailing so far back in the dark ages as ten years ago. 



From the Preface to the First Edition. ix 

anything about it ? : it can take care of itself ; and in fact, 
until lately, our people have generally been taught to 
leave it to do so. 

A third motive of the book has been to get some 
teaching on our constantly recurring quCvStions of money, 
land-tenure, distribution and taxation, into some places 
where Economics are not usually taught, and also to 
get into some places where Economics are taught, a 
fuller treatment of those four topics than is usually 
given. 

A fourth intention has been to spread a just concep- 
tion of Contract, The absence of such a conception is at 
the root of most of the labor troubles, not to speak of 
private breaches of faith.. Those who realize the im- 
portance of the subject will not be impatient with the 
rather protracted and abstract discussion that prefaces 
the treatment of the laws relating to it. 

In time the pupil will, as a voter, need to make up his 
mind on many hard subjects — so hard, some of them, 
that for his conclusions, or anybody's, to be taken seri- 
ousl}^, seems almost ridiculous. But I am not sure that 
just that fact is not the most important of all that I want 
him to appreciate — the fact that in broad civic questions, 
the wisest man can only feel his way — as Lincoln did: 
and that of all pests for the voter to avoid, the chief is 
the man with a scheme — be it silverism, greenbackism, 
grangerism, socialism, communism, anarchism, or (I am 
tempted to add) protectionism and militarism, but some- 
times there are circumstances justifying these two. 

This attitude regarding a scheme may seem inconsist- 
ent with my close approach to recommending one re- 
garding taxation. But that approach is only incidental 
to an effort to trace the indications of Evolution. If our 
men of schemes would honestly restrict themselves to 
such efforts, they would be less dangerous. 

I have hoped to add life, as well as significance, 
even at the cost of interruptions, by frequent compari- 
sons of early conditions with present ones. 

I have not hesitated to repeat — even to repeat often, 
where the topic seemed worth iterating or presenting 



X From the Preface to the First Edition. 

from several sides. The significance of the matters 
here treated is not as plain as that of the multiplication- 
table, which needs to be presented but once. 

THE MATERIAL. 

From the unlimited range of topics embraced in civic 
relations, how to select the little bookful best adapted to 
the needs of the average American youth, is a hard 
problem. Probably the authors of some of the other 
text-books would be more puzzled to find good reasons 
for my selections, than I am for theirs. They generally 
give much more attention than I do to the anatomy of 
the government — state minutely all the offices, national, 
state and local, and not only the qualifications legally 
required for them, but even for voting for them. Now 
most of these things, so far as they affect a vote, the 
voter, as he grows up, is pretty sure to learn from the 
world; and so far as they do not affect his vote, they 
must be relegated to the vast domain of useless knowl- 
edge — unless indeed he aspire to be, as a politician, 
something more than a mere voter. The few boys, 
however, who have this spark of aspiration, get it from 
the altar of genius, even if it be genius for nothing 
higher than running a primary: and genius teaches 
itself. 

A man who tries to judge broad questions by details 
is not going to get anywhere : they involve too inany de- 
tails : he can compass but a small part of them, and is in 
danger of getting the wrong ones and missing the right 
ones. Broad questions can only be judged on broad 
principles. Then, it might be asked: Why expect the 
man of ordinary attainments to judge them at all? I 
never have been able to find out why ; but inasmuch as 
a vote has been given him, that responsibility has been 
laid upon him, whether he is fit for it or not. Well, with 
a fatuity equal perhaps to that which gave him the vote, 
I have tried in this little book to give him some notion 
of the broad principles on which the vote should be 
used. If Ethics — the profoundest and vaguest of all 



^ From the Preface to the First Edition. xi 

sciences, is taught in some shape from the cradle, is it 
plain that problems of Civics need be entirely neglected 
in all shapes, during adolescence? Frankly, I do not 
expect to teach very much about them : but I do hope 
to give such a' notion of how some sound principles look 
from the outside, that the voter can tell whether they 
are recognized or not by those who seek his suffrages, 
and give his vote accordingly. 

And yet I am far from believing that all of even this 
little book can have much meaning, before it is illumi- 
nated by experience. I do believe, however, that much 
here which may be memorized as little more than dog- 
matic statement, will gain meaning from day to day, 
until it becomes significant ; and I have even some hope 
that if the desperate experiment fails with the young, 
the labor may be rewarded by clarifying to some maturer 
minds a grave problem or two, through the same courses 
of thought (even if borrowed thought) that have, I 
assume, clarified them to my own. 

It may seem inconsistent with the foregoing talk 
about broad principles, that the book includes some 
groups of such specific rules of the Municipal Law as a 
layman ought to know and might have to learn at his 
cost in ordinary business experience. Not only, how- 
ever, do I think that their value makes them a justifi- 
able part of the only teaching of civic relations that 
many of my hoped-for readers are apt to get, but I 
have tried to put even such matter in such a way that 
it will do its share in impressing the main lesson of 
the book — the evolution of all the elements of social 
order, especially the inevitably imperfect evolution of 
some of the most important elements — "the glorious 
uncertainties of the law ". 

The original design included a second part, on the 
Evolution of Government, to be issued in the same vol- 
ume with the first. The first part, however, as is 
usually the case, outran expectation; and as it has a 
certain completeness in itself, and is long enough to 
take up the time given in the majority of classes to 
the subject, and especially as it contains most of the 



xii From the Preface to the First Edition. ^ 

''practical" matter contemplated in the entire scheme, 
it has been thought best to publish it without waiting 
for the completion of the second part ; and perhaps 
to let the completion of that part depend upon the 
reception accorded to the very uncertain experiment 
as tried in the present volume. 

Although in this part the evolution of several institu- 
tions has been considered, the evolution of government 
in general has not. The intention for the second part, 
has been not only to give an account of that, but also, 
as a natural concomitant, to give a fuller idea of the 
structure of government, tho substituting for much of the 
detail usually given in books for the same grade of pupils, 
some of the criticism and suggestion usually avoided. 

I let the foregoing paragraph stand to emphasize this 
one. Since that one was written, I have reread the ' ' Civil 
Government in the United States", by my lamented 
friend Professor John Fiske, and I realize more fully 
than I did in m}^ first reading, that it is in many re- 
spects what, while writing my first part, I have come 
to intend my second part to be. If I ever carry out 
that intention, it will be because of the other respects, 
and especially because of a desire to reach minds less 
mature than perhaps Mr. Fiske 's book can reach. 

Meanwhile, and perhaps afterwards (if there ever 
should be an afterwards), Mr. Fiske's iDook may be 
regarded as the best one known to me for supplementing 
what I have tried to do here. 

AUTHORITIES. 

In addition to some of the older authorities which 
are already matters of course, I am specially indebted 
to the following, most of which are rapidly becom- 
ing matters of course, if not so already. I let the 
list grow larger than is usual in acknowledgments, 
in order that it may serve as a brief bibliography 
for the use of teachers.* — The late David A. Wells's 

* I permit this to stand, tho the present edition is intended 
for a grade of pupils whose teachers will know more of the 
bibliography of the subject than I do. 



From the Preface to the First Edition. xiii 

"Recent Economic Changes" and "Theory and Prac- 
tice of Taxation ",* Professor Mayo-Smith's "Economics 
and Statistics ", President Hadley's "Economics ", Pro- 
fessor Adams's "Finance", Professor Daniels's "Ele- 
ments of Pubhc Finance", Professor vSeligman's books 
on Taxation, Mr. Shearman's "Rational Taxation", 
Judge Baldwin's "Modern Political Institutions", Mr. 
Mallock's "Labor and the Popular Welfare" and 
"Classes and Masses ", Professor Goodnow's "Municipal 
Problems ", Doctor Shaw's books on Municipal Govern- 
ment, the valuable quarterly on "Municipal Affairs" 
published by the Refonn Club, especially Dr. Maltbie's 
number on "Municipal Functions", and Mr. Godkin's 
"Problems of Democracy" as well as The Nation 
from the time he founded it. A word of acknowledg- 
ment is also due to the excellent articles on Civic 
questions in Johnson's Cyclopaedia. 

Among elementary books for pupils, I have found 
help in Mr. Raleigh's admirable little "Elementary 
Politics" (which, unfortunately for us, Avas written for 
England), Professor Robinson's "Elem±entary Law", 
Professor Bolles's "Commercial Law ", the summary of 
Municipal LaAV in Mr. Young's "Government Class 
Book", Mr. Fiske's "Civil Government in the United 
States " (tho its field is very different from that of this 
volume), and in several features of Mr. Martin's "Civil 
Government". His summary of the "Establishment 
of Liberty in England" (of course not touched in 
my present volume), seems to me a little gem, tho 
possibly rather condensed for the young pupil. I have 
also found Mr. Ford's "American Citizen's Manual" 
and Mr. Bartlett's "What I ought to know about the 
Government of my Country" handy for quick reference. 

* Two real books that ought to be read by every human being 
old enough and civilized enough to understand them; this, too, 
in spite of the fact that the latter was largely written during the 
lamented author's last illness, and therefore lacks the terseness 
and vigor of his earlier work. It appeared after the chapters on 
taxation in this present volume were written, but it was still pos- 
sible to inject from that work much of whatever good they may 
contain. 



xiv From the Preface to the First Edition. 

If I have done what I have attempted, avS well as these 
authors have done the very different things which they 
attempted, I ought to be content. 

My hearty thanks are due to Mr. Theodore Neu for 
rare intelligence, interest, and suggestiveness in read- 
ing the proofs and preparing the index. 

I am also under very great obligations to Professor 
Goodnow for reading the proofs, and for calling atten- 
tion to errors. Of course he is not responsible for 
those which remain. I shall be similarty grateful to 
any one pointing out any of them. 



CONTENTS. 

Preface to the Third Edition page iii 

From the Preface to the First Edition vii 

PRELIMINARY SURVEY. 

Chapter I. — Society's Control of the Individual — 
Government i 

Sec. I. Introductory. 2. Social Influence and Control : 2 (a), 
through the Family; 2 (6). through Public Opinion; 2 (c). 
through Imitation; 2 (d). through Education; 2 (e) . through 
Government. 3. Civic Relations Defined. 4. Government's 
Functions Illustrated. 5. Government's Functions Classified. 
5 (a). Protection of Rights. 5 (b). Promotion of Convenience. 
5 (c). Taxation. 6. Some General Results of Bad Govern- 
ment. 7. Responsibility for Bad Government. 8. Good Gov- 
ernment Requires Intelligence, Character and Effort. 9. Ex- 
tent of Government's Influence. 9 (a). Illustrated by Money- 

Geographical Divisions of Government. 

Sec. 10. Each Citizen Lives under Several Governments. 
II. Overlappings of Local Governments. 12, Functions of 
Local Government. 13. Of County Government, 14. Of State 
Government. 15. Of National Government. 15 (a). Sover- 
eignty. 

DeparUnents of Government. 

Sec. 16. Legislative, Judicial, Executive. 17, Sources of Gov- 
ernment. iS. The Three Departments Illustrated in Civil and 
Criminal Suits. 19. Legislative, Judicial and Executive Func- 
tions in Local Government. 20. The Functions in Counties. 
21. The Three Functions in States. 22. The Same Functions 
in the Nation. 

XV 



xvi Contents. 



BOOK I.— THE PROTECTION OF RIGHTS. 

Chapter II. — Of Rights in General 21 

Sec. 23. Rights Impose Duties. 24. "Greatest Happiness" 
Principle and its Application in the Three Kinds of Law. 
25 Rights and Duties Imply Each Other. 26 Rights Classi- 
fied. 

Chapter III.— Right to Life 25 

Sec 27. The State's Claims. 28. Humanity's Claims. 29. 
Professional Claims. 30. Life and Work. 31. The Right to 
"Work 31 (a). Subject Only to the State. 31 {b). Picketing 
and Boycotting. 32. Duties Conditioning the Right to Work. 
33 Society's Alleged Duty to Provide Work. 34. The Eng- 
lish Poor Law and the French Workshops. 35. PubUc Charity. 

Chapter IV. — Liberty 32 

Sec. 36. Boundaries of Liberty. 37. Barbarian Liberty and 
CiviHzed Liberty. 38. Duties Balancing Rights to Liberty. 
39. State's Right to Restrain Liberty. 40. "Eternal Vigil- 
ance." 41. Constitutional Defences, Bill of Rights. 42. The 
Man with a Pull. 43. Freedom of Opinion. 44. Laws 
Threatening Liberty. 

Chapter V. — The Pursuit of Happiness 39 

Sec. 45. A General Term for Many Rights. 46. Restricted, 
as All Rights are. 47. The Right to Work Involves Rights of 
Property and Exchange. 47 («)• Limited, like All Other 
Rights. 48. The Rights to Work, to Property and of Ex- 
change Involve Rights to Contract 49. and to Reputation. 
50. State does not Furnish Means to Happiness, but Only 
Rights to Work for Them. 51. Evolution of Property Rights. 
51 (a). Their Sources — Raw Material, Labor, Ability. 

Chapter VI. — Real Property 44 

Sec. 52 . Land and Sea the Source of Raw Material. 53 . Early 
Conditions. 54. Communistic Ownership. 55. The Feudal Sys- 
tem. 55 (a). Why an Advance on Communism. 55 (b). 
When Established. 55 (c). Evolution of Hereditary Feudal 
Relations. t55 {d). Guardianship, Disposal by Marriage. 55 {e). 
Domesday Book. 56. Evolution of Private Ownership. 56 (a). 
Scutage. 56 (6). Leases for Labor. 56 (c). Money Commuta- 
tion of Labor Leases. 57. Land-tenure in America. 58. Land- 
tenure Similar among All Peoples of the Same Grade. 59. Pri- 
vate Property in Land a Great Stimulus to Ability. 60. The 
Strong Man's Chance Not at the Expense of the Weak. 61. 
Proportion of Private Owners Increases with Civilization. 62. 
Landowners the Best Guardians of Government, 63. and the 



C Clients. xvii 

Most Thrifty Citizens. 64. Exaggerated Claims from the Fore- 
going Advantages. 64 (a). The Right to a Home. 64 {b) . The 
Right to a Living. 65. Land Valueless to All but Able Men. 
66. Proposed Reversion to Government Ownership. 67. 
Landowners Support the Government under Either System. 

68. Some Advocate Robbery, which would Disappoint Them. 

69. The Only Way to Help the Poor is to Help Them Help 
Themselves. 70. The Moral Arguments — Original General 
Ownership. 71. Attempt to Remedy Injustice Sometimes 
only Increases It. 72. Performing Duties of Ownership Breeds 
Rights of Ownership. 73. Ri;^hts in Improvements. 74. The 
Unearned Increment. 74 (a). Not Characteristic of Land 
Alone. 75. All Schemes to Abolish Private Ownership are 
Retrogressive. 76. Private Property in Land of Universal 
Importance. 77. Rights in Land Limited like All Rights. 78. 
Rights of Eminent Domain. 

Chapter VII. — Law of Real Property 65 

Sec. 79. The Law in General. 80. Real Estate and Per- 
sonal Property. 81. Laws Protecting Ownership. 81 (a). 
Damages for Trespass. 81 {h) . Right of Ejectment. 82. Laws 
Affecting Transfers. 82 (a). Livery of Seisin. 82 (h) . Statute 
of Frauds Requiring Written Evidence of Transfer. 82 {c) . 
Contracts of Sale. 82 {d) . Deeds. 82 {e). Seal and its Effect. 
82 (/). Essentials of Deeds. 82 (g). Dower and Courtesy. 

82 {h). Value of Established Forms. 82 {i). Registry. Title- 
search. 82 (j). Judgments. 82 {k). Statutes of Limitations. 
Prescriptions. Appurtenances. 82 (/). Title Insurance. 82 (w). 
Clouds on Title. 82 {n). Delivery of Deed. 83. Mortgages. 

83 (a). Bonds. 84. Leases. 85. Rights of Third Parties Re- 
garding Registry. 86. Effect of Fraud. 87. Land Differs from 
Negotiable Papers. 88. Technical Meaning of "Estate" in 
Land. 89. Rights under Estates for Years. 89 (a). Repairs. 
89 (6). Subletting. 89 {c) . Termin ability, Notice. 90. Rights 
under Life Estate. 91. Under Estates at Will. 92. Appur- 
tenances. 92 (a). Party Walls. 92 {h) . Land beside Roads. 
92 (c). Land by Water. 93. Restrictions. 94. The Torrens 
System. 

Chapter VIII. — Personal Property : 87 

Evolution of Rights in It. 

Sec. 95. Product Varies with Abilitv. 95 (a), even the 
Product of the Lowest Laborers. 96. Difficulty of Adjusting 
Rights between Ability and Labor. 97. General Functions of 
Ability. 97 (a). The Civilized Man Loses the Savage's Inde- 
pendence. 97 (6). Things Made to Embody Thoughts. 97 (c). 
Averages and Ability. 97 {d). The Lower Depends on the 
Higher. 97 {e) . "Finds Work." 97 (/). Increases Product. 
97 {^)- Saves Waste. 98. Detailed Functions of Ability. 



xviii Contents. 

98 (a). Prophesying Wants. 98 {h). Raising Capital. 98 (c). 
At the Works. 98 {d) . Outside of the Works. 99. Popular 
View of the Enterpriser. 100. Divisionlof Labor. loi. Few 
Men can Conduct Large Enterprises. 102. Ability Outside of 
Tangible Production. 103. "The Great Industry" Cheapens 
Product. 104. Enterpriser's Income Not at Expense of Labor. 
105. Invention and Evolution. 106. Labor Abounds in Poorest 
Countries. 107. The Enterpriser must Pay Good Wages. 
107 (a). Often in Bad Times. 108. Where Ability's Reward 
does Come from. 109. Production Not All by Hand. no. 
Destruction of Bad Economics. in. Values Depend on 
Sound Morals. 112. Paradoxes of Distribution. 113. Para- 
doxes of Opinion. 114. Why Returns of Labor are Nearly 
Fixed. 115. Why Those of Ability Vary Widely. 116. Capi- 
tal's Return More Like Labor's than Ability's. 117. Ability 
cannot Waste Time and Strength in Grinding Labor or Capital. 
118. Capital and Labor Powerless without Ability. 119. The 
Rates of Division. 120. Enterprisers Generally Get Less than 
Nothing. 121. Handworkers of Special Ability. 122. Prop- 
erty Not All Tangible. 123. Comparative Profits in Different 
Fields of Ability. 124. Why so Few have Great Ability. 
125. Discovery of the Foregoing Truths. 126. Ability In- 
creasing. 127. Suum Cuique. 128. Minimum Wage and Slid- 
ing Scale. 129. No Lack of Opportunity. 130. But Few Able 
to Embrace It. 131. Is Inequality of Fortune Right? 132. 
Evils have their Uses. 

Chapter IX. — Property as Capital 116 

Sec. 133. As Much Entitled to Government's Protection as 
Wages. 134. A Man who can Use Money can Hire It. 135. 
What Capital Consists in. 136. Rent. 137. Interest. 138. 
Usury. 138 (a). Laws against It Useless. 138 (6). Disappear- 
ing from Enlightened Communities. 138 (c). Hard on Bor- 
rowers. 139. Needs for Associating Capital. 140. Incorpora- 
tions. 140 (a). As Affecting Liability. 140 (6). Perpetuity. 
140 {c). Stocks and Bonds. 141. Large Corporations Not All 
Owned by the Rich. 142. Irresponsibility of Corporations. 
143. Very Small Corporations Undesirable. 144. Why Labor 
Hates Corporations. i4S- Danger of Monopoly. 

Chapter X. — Competition, Monopoly and Industrial 

AND Labor Trusts 127 

Sec. 146. Rights of and to Competition. 147. Hated by the 
Lazy and Stupid. 148. Benefits Illustrated. 148 (a). In Do- 
mestic Convenience. 148 (h) . In Travel. 148 (c). In Com- 
mercial Traveling. 148 [d). In Regulation of Prices through 
Demand and Supply. 148 {e). Minor Exceptions. 149. Evils 
in Competition. 149 (a). Suppressing Incapacity not among 
Them. 149 {h). Nor is Poverty. 149 (c). But Wastefulness is. 
150. Public Seldom Gainer by Wasteful Competition. 151. 



Contents. xix 

Cooperation and Competition. 152. Capital Trusts. 152 (a). 
Their Economy. 152 (b). Not Generally Profitable. 152 (c). 
Their Monopoly Sometimes Causes its Own Cure, 152 (d) . 
and Sometimes does Not. 153. Property Rights do Not 
Always Include Monopoly Rights. 154. State Control. 154 (a). 
By Anti-trust Laws. 154 (b). Capital Trusts and Labor 
Trusts. 154 (c). By Fixing Prices. 154 (d). By Eminent 
Domain. 154 (<?). Danger of Government Tyranny. 155. 
Effect of Great Aggregations of Capital on Legislation. 156. 
Socialism as a Remedy. 157. The Only Real Remedies. 
157 (a). An Illustration. 

Chapter XL — Rights in Natural Monopolies 144 

Sec. 158. Some Things are Inevitably Monopolies. 158 (a). 
But the Earth Not One of Them. 159. Why Railroads are 
Apt to be Monopolies. 159 (a). Why They Need Government 
Authorization, 159 (b) . and should Pay for It. 159 (c). So 
with Other Facilities. 160. Those in America Being Generally 
Grabbed by the Politicians. 161. Should Not be Sold Out- 
right. 162. How Natural Monopolies Become Personal Prop- 
erty. 

Chapter XII. — The Law of Rights in Personal Prop- 
erty 148 

Sec. 163. Differences between Law of Personal Property and 
that of Land. 163 (a). Personal Property Seldom Registered. 
163 (b). Important Kinds Passed by Endorsement. 163 (c). 
Can Take One's Own Wherever Found, and in Some Cases by 
Force. 163 (d) . Ownership of Some Kinds can be Lost With- 
out Neglect. 163 (e). Can be Mortgaged without Registry if in 
Mortgagee's Possession. 164. Pledges. 165. Personal Prop- 
erty the Great Field of Contract. 

Chapter XIII. — Contract 152 

As an Element in Civilization. 

Sec. 166. Difference between Contract Rights and Property 
Rights. 167. Contract, Agreement, Bargain. 168. Contract 
Possible Only to the Free. 169. Contract an Education in 
Freedom. 170. Under Contract, only Able Employers can Se- 
cure Labor. 171. Status versus Contract. 172. Contract, 
Freedom and Private Property All Evolve Together. 173. As 
They Evolve, Militarism Declines. 174. Because it is a Form 
of Status. 175. Fighting versus Producing. 175 (a). Illus- 
trated in Nations of To-day. 176. Why Private Property is 
Essential to Advance beyond Status. 177. Civilization and 
Trade Go Together. 178. Breaking Contracts and Advocating 
Socialism. 



XX Contents. 

Chapter XIV. — General Law of Contract 159 

Sec. 179. Essentials of a Contract. 179 (a). Illustrations. 
180. Natural Love and Affection. 181. Promises and Con- 
tracts. 182. Legal Fiction. 183. Mutuality in Contracts. 
184. Law and Religion. 185. Justice and Honor. 186. Con- 
tracts the Law will not Enforce. 186 (a). For Wrong-doing. 
186 {h). Wagers. 186 {c). "The Act of God or the Public 
Enemy." 187. Law Imposes Self-preservation. 188. But can- 
not Furnish Wisdom. 189. Contracts which the Law Assumes. 
190. Estoppel. 191. Carelessness and Fraud. 192. Fraud 
Never Defined. 193. Statutes of Limitations Again. 194. 
Force Vitiates Contract. 195. Courts Needed against Ignor- 
ance as much as against Fraud. 195 (a). Illustrated in Con- 
fusion, Construction and Friendly Suits. 196. Contracts when 
Parties do not Meet. 197. The Law is an Evolution. 

Chapter XV. — Law of Contracts Concerning Personal 
Property 173 

Sec. 198. Sale and Delivery, 198 (a), as Generally Affected 
by the Statute of Frauds, 198 {h). by Part Payment. 198 (c). 
Prior Lien. 199. No One can Sell More Title than He Has. 
200. Possession and Ownership. 201. Owner must not Secure 
Possession by Force. 202. Delivery and Acceptance Com- 
plete Ownership. 202 (a). Delivery to Agent or Carrier Good. 
203. Conditional Sale. 204. Option. 205. When Defects must 
be Disclosed. 206. Warranty. 207. Suretyship. 208. Insur- 
ance. 209. Bailments 209 (a), on Different Kinds of Goods. 
209 (6). "Common Carrier" Defined. 209 {c). Limiting Lia- 
bility without Contract. 209 {d) . Bill-of-Lading. 209 {e) . 
Hiring. 209 (/). The Law does not Require Impossibilities. 

209 (g). Bailment without Consideration. 209 Qi). Liability 
of Innkeepers. 209 (i). Pledge. 209 {j) . General Principle of 
Liability of Bailees. 210, Tender. 210 (a). Kinds of Money in. 

210 (6). Determined by Congress. 211. Contractual Disabili- 
ties. 212. Some Limits of Quantum Valebat. 212 (a). En- 
richment. 213. The Law Protects the Weak. 

Chapter XVI. — Law of Contracts for Personal Rela- 
tions 190 

Sec. 214. Agency. 214 (a). Authorized Acts Bind Principal. 
214 {h) . Agent Liable for Exceeding his Authority. 214 (c). 
Principal Bound Also by Acts Third Party has Good Reason 
to Believe Authorized. 214 {d) . Agency through Necessity. 
214 {e). Agent cannot Make any Profit for Himself. 214 (/). 
The Superior is Generally Liable, 214 (g). even for Wrong 
Done in Course of Routine Duties, 214 {h) . which Justice to 
the Sufferer Generally Requires. 214 {i). Both Principal and 
Agent Liable in Wrong-doing. 214 (j). Classes of Agents. 
215. Partnership. 216. Service. 216 (a). Discharge for Cause 



Contents. 



XXI 



Stops Pay for Rest of Term. 216 (&). Discharge without 
Cause, or Leaving for Cause, does not. 216 {c) . Both Bound 
for the Entire Term. 217. Remedies for Broken Contracts. 

Chapter XVII. — Law of Some Quasi-Contractual Re- 
lations jgg 

Sec. 218. Trusteeship in General. 219. Safeguards. 220. 
Assignees of Bankrupts. 220 (a). Justice of Discharging 
Bankrupts. 221. Administrators. Devolution of Intestate Es*^ 
tates. 221 (a). Rights of Relatives of Intestates. 222. Execu- 
tors. Wills. 222 (a). Who cannot Make Wills. 222 (6). Re- 
strictions on Alienation. 222 (c). Devises for Educational or 
Charitable Uses. 223. Guardianship. 224. Need of Probate 
Courts. 225. Trustees for Defectives. 226, Court Supervision 
of Trustees in General. 

Chapter XVIII. — Personal Property 208 

Schemes for Distributing It More Evenly. 

(I) Scamping, Forbidding Work, Destroying Product ^ Anar-^ 
chism, Comm-unism. 

Sec. 227. Poverty has No Causes. 228. Scamping Work. 
228 (a). Keeps the Scamper Out of Jobs. 228 (6). He Gets 
Only One Profit but Pays Many. 228 (c)- Cannot Long Re- 
ceive Good Wages unless Earned. Piecework. 229. Pretend- 
ing and Forbidding Labor. 230. "Shutting Down" a Different 
Case. 231. Destruction as an Aid to Production. 232. Only 
One Class of Many Schemes to Get Something Out of Nothing. 

233. People Generally Consider Only Income, Not Outgo. 

234. Anarchism. 234 (a). Badness of Present Laws does not 
Prove Goodness of Proposed Changes. 235. Communism. 

235 (a). $1,200 Apiece. 235 (6). Sudden Wealth a Doubtful 
Blessing. 235 (c). Would Last but a Little While, 235 {d) . 
and then there would be Less than Now. 235 {e) . Meaning- 
less without Robbery. 235 (/). Many Kinds of Wealth cannot 
be Divided without Being Destroyed. 

Chapter XIX. — Personal Property (Continued) 225 

Schemes for Distributing It More Evenly {Continued). 
(II) Socialism,. 

Sec. 236. Socialism. 236 (a). Wages could not Rise. 236 (6). 
Impracticability of Political Management. 236 (c) . Losses to 
Education, Charity and Liberty. 236 {d). Forcing Ability. 

236 {e). The Argument from Experience. 236 (/). Can be 
Undertaken when Government is its Own Customer. 236 {g). 
Private Initiative Essential to Variety. 236 Qi) . General Gov- 
ernment Production Attacks Property, Contract and Charity. 
236 {i). Futility of Attempting It by Eminent Domain. 236 (/). 



XXll 



Contents. 



Effect on Laborers. 236 {k). A Premmm on Laziness. 236 (/). 
Would Destroy Freedom. 236 (w). The Unemployed. 237. 
Names Socialism and Individualism. 237 (a). Socialism a 
Vague Name. 237 (6). At Least Three Meanings. 238. So- 
cialism against Competition. 239. All Experience for Indi- 
vidualism. 240. Socialism and Magic an Illustration. 241. 
Present Agencies toward Same Ends. 242. No Magic in 
Laws and Names. 243. Another Specimen. 244. Need and 
Desert. 245. High-pressure Progress. 246. Socialism, when 
Possible, will be Needless. 247. The Web of Civilization. 

Chapter XX. — Personal Property (Continued) 243 

Schemes for Distributing It More Evenly (Continued) . 

(Ill) Trade-union Coercion. 

Sec. 248. Corner of Supply of Labor. 248 (a). Justifiable 
Only in Self-defence. 249. Demand and Supply in Labor. 

250. Wages Necessarily Limited 250 (a), by Demand for 
Product, 250 (5). by Competition, 250 (<:). by Invention. 

251. False Justifications for Coercion. 252. Aimed against 
Laborer, Employer and Public. 253. Coercing the Employer. 
254. The Strike. 255. Conspiring to Stop Work. 256. Other 
Coercions. 257. Misleading Statistics of Strikes. 258. Co- 
ercing the Laborer. 258 (a). The Labor Trust. 259. Coercing 
the Public. The Union Label. 260. A Second Illustration. 
261. The Right to Stop Work. 262. The Community's De- 
fence. 263. Society Organizing in Self-defence. 264. Educa- 
tional Results. 264 (a). The Community's Defence will De- 
fend the Workman. 

Chapter XXI. — Personal Property (Continued) 265 

Schemes for Distributing It More Evenly {Continued). 

(IV) Labor and the Law. 

Sec. 265. Natural Law and Civic Law. 265 (a). The Law of 
Conspiracy. 265 (6). The "Corner" Again. 265 (c). Mali- 
cious Intent. 265 (d). Labor-saving Machinery. 265 {e). The 
Open Shop. 265 (/). "Immediate Interest" and the Sympa- 
thetic Strike. 265 {g). Prof . Adams' Summary. 265 Qi). Con- 
flicting Laws. 265 {i). Duty of District Attorneys. 266. The 
Workman's Freedom. 267. The Law Chaotic. 268. Picketing 
Unlawful. 269. Unions' Liability for Damages. 269 (a). Mis- 
demeanor as a Substitute. 270. Some Summaries of the Law. 
271. Injunctions. 272. Regulation of Wages, Hours and Con- 
ditions. 272 (a). The Labor Trust Again . 272 {b) . Protecting 
the Laborer against Himself. 272 {c) . Wages Unlike Condi- 
tions. 272 {d). The Living Wage. 272 {e). Too Much Care 
Enervating and against Liberty. 272 (/). Extremes and the 
Medium. 



Contents. xxiii 

Chapter XXII. — Personal Property (Continued) 289 

Schemes for Distributing It Alore Evenly {Continued). 

(V) Remedies on Trial. 
Sec. 273. Industrial War and Industrial Law. 274. Legal 
Experiments in Australasia. 274 (a). Their Results to be Dis- 
counted for American Conditions. 275. State Competition with 
Monopolies. 275 (a). In Lending Capital. 275 (6). In Some 
Industries. 276. The Minimum Wage. 2.76 (a). Against 
Sweating. 276 (6). Sought by Good Employers. 276 (c). How 
Regulated. 276 {d) . Not Always Effective. 276 {e). Recru- 
descence of the Sweat-shop. 276 (/). Exceptions Allowed. 
276 (g). High Prices Resulting. 276 (h). Bolstering up Needed. 
276 {i). Points to State Employment and Socialism. 277. 
Statute Law and Natural Law. 278. The Arbitration Courts. 
278 (a). Started to Prevent Strikes. 279. Ineffectiveness of 
Voluntary Arbitration. 280. The First Compulsory Arbitra- 
tion Act. 280 (a). Recognized Only Unions. 280 (6). Could 
Dismiss Trivial Claims. 280 (c) . Damages. 280 {d) . Faith- 
ful Acceptance of Decrees. 280 (e). Competence of Courts in 
Business Affairs. 280 (/). Effect on Strikes. 280 {g) . Spread 
of the Courts and Unexpected Activity. 280 {h) . Both Sides 
Arranged Cases to Refer. 280 {i) . Courts Tried to Follow the 
Market. 280 (/). Court's Power of Initiative. 280 {k) . Ques- 
tion of Overcrowding. 281. Aspects in 1890. 282. A Theory 
of Wages and Prices. 283. Mr. Lloyd's Conclusions in 1900. 
284. Mr. Reeves in 1903. 285. Claims Continued Success. 286. 
Judge Backhouse's Testimony. 287. The Courts to Keep the 
Peace. 288. Details by Mr. Reeves. 289. Dr. Clark in 1906 
not Quite so Optimistic. 290. Courts Now Have Legislative 
Power. 291. Laws against Strikes. 292. Current Law Pro- 
hibits Sympathetic Strikes. 293. And Makes Awards Binding 
in Adjoining Districts. 294. Awards Evaded. 295. Hard to 
Fit Conditions. 296. Danger of Over-regulation. 297. Pro- 
motes Centralization of Industry. 298. And Uniformity of 
Wages. 299. But so Minimizes Oppression. 300. Only One 
Side can Pay Damages. 301. But Moral Sanction Often 
Effective. 302. Continued High Prices and Palliatives. 303. 
Courts Consider Cost of Living, and Profits and All Condi- 
tions. 304. Startling Declaration of Court's Powers. 305. 
Supports the Closed Shop — Conditionally. 306. Political and 
Class Legislation by Courts. 307. Curtails Freedom of the 
Press. 308. And "the Obligation of Contracts". 309. And 
the Right of Assembly. 310. And Trial by Jury. 311. At- 
tacks on Liberty not Premeditated. 312. New Conditions, 
Unexpected Results. 313. Yet All Admitted to be Progress 
toward Socialism. 314. Has Experiment Proved Socialism at 
War with Liberty and Progress? 315. No Business Disasters 
yet. 316. Experimenting in Prosperous Times. 317. Dis- 



xxiv Contents. 

agreement as to Prospects. 318. Increased Fealty to Law. 
319. The Equilibrium Unstable. 320. The Latest Word. 321. 
Repair as Likely as Failure. 322. Gains in Prosperity may 
Carry through Adversity. 322 (a). America must Change. 

Chapter XXIII. — Personal Property (Continued) 325 

Proved Methods for Diffusing It More Evenly. 
Sec. 323. Progress in General. 324. Diffusion of Wealth 
Depends on Diffusion of Ability. 325. Averages Tend to Rise. 
326. Diffusion Increasing, 327. "Rich Richer, and Poor 
Poorer" is not True in Civilized Countries. 327 (a). Pendu- 
lum Swings Backward in 1903. 327 (b). Recent Reduction in 
Hours. 328. Increase in Wages and Decrease in Other Prices 
Come Largely from Capital's Share, 329. and from Labor's 
Increased Ability, 330. and from Diffusion of Honesty, 330 (a), 
which Makes Kverybody's Money go Farther, 330 (b) . especially 
Honesty in Government, 331. and from Creating and Supply- 
ing New Wants, 331 (a), mainly through Labor-saving Machin- 
ery, 331 (6). which, tho of Some Harm at the Outset, 331 (c). 
is but Seldom of Any Now. 332. A Man Secures Wealth Him- 
self . 332 (a), by Forehandedness against Hard Times, 332 (6). 
in which Prices of Necessities Tend to Keep Up, while those of 
Luxuries Fall. 332 (c). By Cultivating Ability. 333. Poverty 
Seldom Blameless. 334. Most Rich Men Born Poor. 335. 
Happiness not Dependent on Wealth. 336. Wise Philan- 
thropy Necessary to Civilization. 336 (a). It should Continue 
on Present Lines. 336 (b) . It should Help Only Those that 
cannot Work. 337. Province of the Law. 337 (a). Cannot 
Discriminate between People. 338. Benevolence does not 
Prevent Accumulating Wealth. 339. Speculation. 340. Law 
cannot Regulate Wealth Wisely. 340 (a) Must not Paralyze 
Ability. 341. Duties of Wealth. 341 (a). In Politics. 341 (6). 
In Charity and Education or Even in Sport. 342. America's 
Rich Men Peculiarly Oblivious of Public Duty. 343. Useless 
Rich Man a ' ' Dependent ". 

BOOK II.— THE PROMOTION OF CONVENIENCE. 

Chapter XXIV. — Preliminary Survey 357 

Chapter XXV. — Money 359 

General Considerations . 

Sec. 344. Reasons for Studying Money. 345. Barter and 
Money. 346. Swindling by Money. 347. Kinds of Money. 
348. Qualities of All Money. 349. Bad Money as Legal Ten- 
der. 350. Definition Reached. 351. Bad Money Buys Less 
than Good. 352. Value in Paper Money. 353. Fiat Money, 
Token Money. 354- Redemption Money. 



Contents. xxv 

Chapter XXVI. — Money (Continued) 366 

Some American Experience. 
Sec. 355. How Paper Money Cheated Creditors, 355 (a), 
and Raised Prices. 356. "Never Mind Europe". 357. Effect 
of Money Not Payable in Gold. 358. Why the Silver Dollar 
has Depreciated. 359. Why Coins were not Made Heavier. 
360. American Remonetization in '78 and '90. 361. The Ra- 
pacious Fooling the Ignorant. 362. Who Profits by Light- 
weight Silver? 363. The Poor are not the Debtor Class, 364. 
nor the Class that Handles Least Gold. 365. The Panic of '93. 
365 (a). Begins with Alarm in Europe. 365 (6). Business Suf- 
fers. 365 (c); Kansas Tries a New Way of "Bleeding". 
365 {d). Hoarding Begins. 365 {e). The Banks and the Poor! 
365 (/). Cleveland Stops the Panic, 365 {g) . but at Heavy Cost. 
366. Government Banking. 367. "16 to i". 368. Improved 
Trade Balance Supplies Gold. 369. But that cannot be 
Depended upon. 370. Light-weight Silver Money no New 
Scheme 

Chapter XXVII. — Money (Continued) ^go 

Needs for the Future. 
Sec. 371. The Best Safeguard. 372. The Safest Money. 
373. Paper Better than Light-weight Silver. 374. Safety in 
Large Bills. 375. Only Safe Silver Certificates. 376. Objec- 
tions to All Government Notes. 377. Yet Coin Insufficient 
377 (a), and Inelastic, 377 {h). and Eats up Interest. 378.' 
Good Paper Currency Preferable. 379. But not from Govern- 
ment. 380. Essentials of Banknotes. "Wildcat" Money. 
381. Essentials of a Sound System. 3S2. Basis for an Elastic 
Currency. 383. The Farmer's Needs. 383 (a). Partly his Own 
Lookout. 383 (6). Remedy for Legitimate Needs. 

Chapter XXVIII. — Public Works ,gj. 

Extra-Municipal . 

Sec. 384. Roads. 384 (a). As Spreading Civilization. 384(6). 
Evolution in Our Race. 384 {c) . Bad American Organization! 
385. Bridges. 386. Regulation. Ownership. Operation. 387." 
Ferries and Docks. 387 (a). Municipal and Private Con- 
tracts. 388. Railroads. 388 (a). Superior Service in America 
and England. 388 (6). Italy. 388 (c). Germany. 38S {d). 
Government Operation in America. 388 {e). American Con- 
struction Less Thorough, 388 (/). and Incidentally Less Care- 
ful of Safety. 388 (g). Freight Discriminations. 388 (h) . 
Consolidation and Competition. 388 {i) . Constitutional Ques- 
tions. 388 (7). Taxation of Franchises. 388 {k). Corporation 
Graft and Political Graft. 388 (/). American Attempts at 
Government Regulation. 388 {m). Unsuccessfulness of Gov- 
ernment Regulation not Complete Argument for Government 



xxvi Contents. 

Operation. 388 (n). "Labor" under Government Operation. 

388 (0). Improvements Possible under Private Control. 
^88 ip) Government Control of Private Operations. 388 ((/). 
Government Aids and Politics. 388 (r). The Conclusion. 
389. Post-office and Express. 389 (a). City versus Country. 

389 (6). Favoritism to Papers and Periodicals. 389 {c). Com- 
pared with Other Countries. 389 {d) . Damage to Literature. 
389 {e). Government versus Private Enterprise. 389 (/). Best 
where People Watch It Most. 390. Telegraph. 

Chapter XXIX. — Public Works (Continued) 420 

Municipal. 
Sec. 391. Street Railways. 391 (a). Evolution. 391 (6). 
Municipal Operation Increasing in England, Little on Conti- 
nent in America None. 391 (c). Need of Constant Govern- 
ment Inspection. 391 {d) . Municipal Sharing of Profits Ad- 
vancing in America. 391 {e). Ownership in America. 391 (/). 
Argument for Municipal Operation. 391 (g). American and 
European Conditions. ■" 391 (/i). Glasgow. 391 {i). Great Brit- 
ain versus America. 391 (j). Nashville. 391 (fe). Rochester. 
391 (/). The "Increment" in Franchises. 391 (w). Should be 
Leased but not Sold, and be under One Management. 391 (n). 
Rates of Fare. 391 (o). Deteriorating Private Service may 
Compel Municipal Experiment. 391 {p). Some Other Ex- 
periments Desirable First. 392. Waterworks. 392 (a). Why 
Fit for Municipalization. 392 (6). Health Questions. 392 {c) 
Municipal Management Naturally Wasteful. 393. Lighting 
393 (a). Craves MunicipaUzation Less than Water. 393 (6) 
Cheapened by It in Some Places in Europe. 393 {c) . American 
Reports UnreHable but Increasingly Discouraging. 393 {d) 
Peculiar Case in Richm^ond. 393 {e). Other American Cities 
393 (/)• General Considerations. 393 (g). Electricity. 393 {h) 
Electricity versus Gas. 393 (i). Major Darwin on Utilities 
Already Treated. 394. Telephone. 395. Tearing up Streets 
Tunnels for Pipes, Wires, etc. 396. Advertising Signs. 397 
Summary. 

Chapter XXX. — Latest Aspects of Government Oper- 
ation • • • 447 

Sec. 398. Platonists and Aristotelians. 399. Major Darwin 
to 1903. 400. Municipal Operation Retarding Development. 
400 (a). Dogs in the Manger. 400 {h). English Municipaliza- 
tion Obstructive. 400 (c). Strangling Private Enterprise. 
400 {d). Franchises too Short. 400 {e) . Ownership Loaded 
with Operation. 400 {f) . Results in Number of Lighting Plants 
and Telephones. 400 (g). "Politics". 400 Qi) . English Mu- 
nicipalization Dangerous to the Purity of Government. 400 {i) . 
Leaves Out the Able Man. 400 (j). Reversal of English Sen- 
timent. 401. Russia and Socialism. 402, Australasian Ex- 



Contents. xxvii 

perience. 403. Conditions Unprecedentedly Favorable. 404. 
Government Railroads Run at a Loss. 405. Taxes Highest 
among Civilized Peoples. 406. Vice of Statistics. 407. Tele- 
phones and Coal-mines at a Loss. 408. Government Success in 
Money-lending. 409. Life-insurance. 410. Conclusions Nega- 
tive. 411. Laborers Demoralized. 412. Some Fallacies. 413. 
The Latest American Experience. 413 (a). Omaha. 413 (6). 
A Weak Showing. 413 (c). The Strong Man will Control 
under any System. 413 {d). Monopoly and Privilege. 
413 {e). Our Private Initiative Better than Europe's. 413 (/). 
Democracy on Trial. 413 (g). Some Interesting Experiences. 

413 ih). Fallacious Reasoning. 413 {i). Desirability of Pub- 
licity and Commissions. 413 {j). Monopolies the Ideal Field of 
the State when Practicable. 414. Summary and Conclusions. 

414 (a). English Taxation Increased without Proportionate Re- 
sults. 414 (6). English Municipalization Obstructive, Espe- 
cially to Inventive Talent . 4 1 4 (c) . " The Government Stroke ' ' . 
414 {d). Municipalization Desirable Only as Defence against 
Monopoly. 414 {e). Municipalization as Training in Citizen- 
ship. 

Chapter XXXI. — Peculiar American Municipal Diffi- 
culties 473 

Sec. 415. American Municipal Corruption. 416. New York 
in 1870, 416 (a), in 1894, 416 {h). in 1898. 417. City Works 
are the Plums of Rural as well as Urban Politicians. 418. The 
City Contrasted with the Nation. 419. Contractors in Office. 

420. National Parties in Local Affairs. 420 (a). Partly Caused 
by Method of Electing U. S. Senators. 420 {h). Corrupts Both 
National and Local Politics. 420 (c). Paradoxes of Democracy. 

421. Civil Service Reform as a Remedy. 422. State Functions 
to the State, Local Functions to. the Locality. 422 (a). Edu- 
cation. 422 {h). Police. 423. America Alone in Confusing 
Local and National Politics. 424. Vast American Wealth and 
Good Nature Promote Carelessness. 425. Corruption of Voters 
under the Guise of Charity. 426. Non-taxpayers Voting. 
426 (a). Tilden Commission's Proposed Remedy. 426 (6). 
Local Suffrage Rights Differ from Others. 426 (c). Limited 
Local Suffrage in All Well-governed Cities. 426 {d) . Where 
the Non-voter is Best Taken Care of. 426 {e). America can 
Only Improve the Voter and Limit what He Controls. 427. 
Universal Suffrage Logically ImpHes IndividuaHsm. 

Chapter XXXII. — Recreations and Other Help to the 

Less Fortunate Capable 49° 

Sec. 428. Museums and Libraries. 429- Parks. 43°- Clear- 
ing Slums. 430 (a). Possible Only under Eminent Domain. 
430 {h). Graft. 430 {c) . The Negative Side. 430 (^)- Success 
under Private Enterprise. 431. Housing the Poor. 431 (a) 
Community should Regulate It in Self-defence. 432- Personal 



xxviii Contents. 

Conveniences, Army Outfitting, etc. 433. Economy and Civ- 
ilization Both Require Charity, 433 (a), preferably from 
Individuals. 434. Hospitals and Asylums. 435. Relief 
to Individual Poor. 436. Pawnshops. 437. Savings-banks. 

438. Lodging-houses. 438 (a). Throw Light on Street-begging. 

439. Labor Bureaus. 440. Insurance. 441. General Conclu- 
sions Regarding Charity. 441 (a). Mutual Help Better than 
Government Help. 441 {h). The Church, the State, the Philan- 
thropist. 441 {c). The Taxpayer. 441 ((i) . Many Improvements 
not at Taxpayers' Expense. 

Chapter XXXIII. — The Defective Classes 507 

Sec. 442. The Persistently Poor. 442 (a). Neglect Increases 
the Number. 443. The Insane. 444. The Criminal. 444 (a). 
Generally Defective. 444 {b) . One Wrong Step does not Dem- 
onstrate a Criminal. 444 (c). The Indeterminate Sentence. 
444 {d). Cheaper to Keep Rounders Permanently. 444 {e). 
Prison Labor. 445. Euthanasia. 446. A Society Able to Use 
Ideal Remedies will not Need Them. 447. Advisability of 
Death as a Penalty. 

Chapter XXXIV. — The Young; Education 517 

Sec. 448. Nurture. 449. Education. 449 (a). The Illiterate 
Voter. 449 (6). Unusable Education. 449 (c). Usable Edu- 
cation. 449 {d). Practical Education no Foe to Poetry. 
449 {e) . Pauperization. 449 (/). State's Responsibility Estab- 
lished. 449 (g). Parents should Pay when Able. 450. The 
Higher Education. 450 (a). Not Well Conducted by Political 
Pulls. 450 (6). The State, the Church, the Philanthropist. 

Chapter XXXV. — General Conclusions on the Sphere 

OF Government 523 

Sec. 451. Individualism and Collectivism. 452. Municipaliza- 
tion Increases with Independence, Decreases with Police Con- 
trol. 452 (a). Increases with Good Local Government. 453. 
Necessary Limits. 453 (a). Effective Industry Requires Com- 
petition. 453 (6). Mainly Determined by Natural Monopoly. 
453 {c). Tax for Commodities Universally Used, Charge for 
Others as Used. 454. The Fundamental Question. 455. Gov- 
ernment Service Outside of Monopolies Demoralizing to People 
and Officers. 

BOOK III.— TAXATION. 

Chapter XXXVI. — General Considerations on Taxa- 
tion 529 

Sec. 456. Taxes not the Only Source of Revenue. 457. In- 
terest and Importance of the Subject. 458. Everybody Pays 
Taxes. 459. Rates in Different Countries. 460. Methods In- 
fluence Rate, 460 (o). and Morality, Prosperity, Peace, Stable 
Government, and Even Health and Life, 460 (5). and Move- 



Contents. xxix 

ments of Capital and Ability. 461. Taxation and Civilization. 
462. Opposite Methods Illustrated. 463. Direct and Indirect 
Taxes. 464. Shifting of Taxes. 464 (a). Need of Free Com- 
petition. 464 (6). Prices Highest where Taxes are Highest. 

Chapter XXXVII. — Indirect Taxes 539 

Sec. 465. Excise. 465 (a). Taxes may Limit Dangerous 
Pursuits. 466. Duties. 466 (a). Encourage Home Produc- 
tion. 466 (6). Tariff Wars. 466 (c) . The Foreigner Sometimes 
Pays the Tax. 466 (d). Early American Experience. 466 (e). 
From the Revolution to the Civil War. 466 (/). Since the Civil 
War. 466 (g). Industrial Effects. 466 (h). Both Parties Cor- 
rupted. 466 (i). Tariffs Tend to Expand. 466 (j) . Protection 
and Wages. 466 (k). Numbers Concerned. 466 (/). Gluts. 
466 (ni) . Effect on Trusts. 466 (n). Conclusions. 466 (o). 
Causes of American System. 466 (p). Expert Opinion on 
American Method. 467. Stamp-taxes. 467 (a). Both Direct 
and Indirect. 467 (b) . Often- Merely a Petty Nuisance. 

Chapter XXXVIII. — Indirect Taxes (Continued) 556 

General Conclusions. 

Sec. 468. Indirect Taxes Expensive to Pay and to Collect. 
468 (a). Hard on the Poor. 468 (6). Stimulate Corrupt Legis- 
lation. 468 (c). Fail to Stimulate Interest in Government. 
468 (d). Why They are Popular. 468 (e). Summary for and 
against. 

Chapter XXXIX. — Inquisitorial Direct Taxes 562 

Income and Inheritance Taxes. 

Sec. 469. Direct Taxes Divided into Inquisitorial and Ob- 
vious. 470. Income-tax. 470 (a). Falls Only on Successes and 
Active Property, 470 (6). and is Proportioned to Ability. 
470 {c) . Like All Inquisitorial Taxes, a Premium on Lying. 
470 {d). Violates Rights of Privacy. 470 {e) . Generally 
Doubles Taxation. 470 (/). As Illustrating Progressive Taxa- 
tion. 470 (g). Discrimination of Sources. 470 {h). As Equal- 
izing Fortunes. 470 {i). As Offsetting Injustice in Other 
Taxes. 470 (j). Out of Proportion to State's Services. 
470 {k) . Taxation versus Benevolence. 470 (/). Taxing away 
Business and Benevolence. 470 {m) . Characteristic of Mili- 
tarism. 470 (n) . Heaviest on Those Least Able to Bear It. 
470 (o). Approved Only as a Necessity. 471. Inheritance- 
taxes. 471 (a). Collateral not Very Objectionable. 471 (6). 
Conclusions . 

Chapter XL. — Inquisitorial Direct Taxes (Continued) . . 573 
Personal-Property Tax. 
Sec. 472. Personal-property Taxes. 472 (a). Uncertain of 
Diffusion. 472 (6). Tend to Double Taxation. 472 (c). Ef- 



XXX ^ Contents. 

feet on Prosperity. 472 {d). Personal Property Hard to Find 
or Appraise. 472 {e) . Views of Authorities and Operation of 
Natural Laws, 472 (/). Showing of Statistics. ' 472 (g). "Pub- 
licity" a Foolish Means toward a Foolish End. 472 {h). 
"Homogeneity" Fallacy. 472 {i). Effect on Corporations, 
472 {j). Cause of Prejudice. 472 {k) . As Affecting Franchise 
and Non-franchise Corporations. 

Chapter XLI. — Obvious Direct Taxes 586 

I. The Realty-Taxes in General. 

Sec. 473. Objections to Realty-taxes. 473 (a). Their His- 
tory. 473 {h). Incidental to High Civilization. 473 (c). Ques- 
tion of Diffusion. 473 {d) . Views of Economists. 473 {e). 
Fact versus Theory. 473 (/). Effects on Producers. 473 {g). 
Stimulate Production. 473 Qi). Sure to be Paid, 473 {t). 
and Easy to Assess, 473 {j). and Cheapest to Collect. 473 {k). 
All Owners must Always Pay Part of It. 473 (/). Summary 
for and against the Real-estate Tax. 474. Real Estate under 
Poor Government. 475. Opinion of the Fathers. 476, Equal- 
ization. 476 (a). Remedies Proposed. 

II. Varieties of Realty-Taxes. 

477. Realty-tax, Single Tax, Separated Tax, Appropriation- 
tax. 478. The Single Tax. 478 (a). Locke's Theory. 478 (6). 
Walpole's. 478 {c). Diffusion on Different Grades of Property. 
478 id). Local Option in Taxation. 478 {e). Effect of Single 
Tax Suddenly Imposed. 478 (/). Experience. 479. Separated 
Tax on Land Exclusive of Improvements. 479 (a). Buildings 
Diffuse Taxes More Readily than Land. 479 (5). Nevertheless 
Separated Tax Encourages Improvement. 480, Appropriation- 
tax, 

III. Rental-Value Tax. 

481. Rental-value Tax is on Consumption. 481 (a). Not a 
Real-estate Tax. 481 (6). Not Double Taxation. 481 (c). 
Should be on One Residence Only. 481 {d). Shifting. 

IV. Franchise-Tax. 

482. Has the Characteristics of a Real-estate Tax. 

Chapter XLII. — Double Taxation 608 

Sec. 483. Taxation of Mortgages. 483(a). Mortgage a Debt, 
not a Value, 483 (6) . and Value Alone should be Taxed. 483 {c) . 
Mortgagor Generally Pays Tax Indirectly. 483 {d). Mortgage 
not Properly Real Estate. 483 (<?). In Different States. 
483 (/). Letting Mortgagor Pay Mortgagee's Tax. 483 (g). 
Conclusion. 484. Why Tax Mortgages and not Notes? 485. 
Tax All Recorded Liens ' ' at the Source ' ' , and Deduct Them 
from Value of Property. 486. Multiplied Taxation, Especially 
bv Excises. 



Contents. xxxi 

Chapter XLIII. — Summary and Conclusions on Taxa- 
tion. 615 

Sec. 487. Perfect Taxation not for Imperfect People. 488. 
Vampire-taxes Needed Now. 4S8 (a). The Rental-value Tax 
may Ultimately Replace Them. 489. Inquisition-taxes In- 
tolerable. 490. The Remote Ideal. 490 (a). Nature Pays 
Some Taxes, 490 (b). and can Pay All. 490 (c). A Question- 
able Objection. 490 (d). The Future of Taxation. 490 {e). No 
Hardship to Landowners. 490 (/). Amortization. 490 (g). A 
Boon to the Poor. 490 (/z). How to Include All Citizens. 491. 
Causes of Delay. 491 (a). Ignorance and Self-seeking. 491 {b). 
In the U. S. Constitution. 

Chapter XLIV. — General Summary and Conclusions. . 624 
Sec. 492. General Conclusions regarding the Civic Relations. 
493. The Questions for Experts. 494. Evolution of the Civic 
Relations, 494 (a), and of ti.e.r Problems. 494 (b). Rapid Ac- 
cumulation of Nostrtmis. 495. The Labor Trust. 496. The 
Labor Question a Real Question for Real Reason. 497. Ag- 
gression Begets Aggression. 497 (a). Evolution of Vices in 
Government. 498. Improve Suffrage. 499- Evolution not All 
Negative. 499 (a). Even the Desire for Wealth Beneficial. 
499 (6). The Struggle for Existence Ceasing to be a Brute 
Struggle. 499 (c). Wisdom and Sympathy Gaining Control. 
499 (d). They cannot be Forced. 499 (e). Their Necessary 
Creed. 

Index '. 633 



ON THE CIVIC RELATIONS. 



PRELIMINARY SURVEY. 

CHAPTER I. 

society's control of the individual — GOVERNMENT. 

Unless the student has grown up where 
n ro uc ory. discussion of the civic relations is more 
frequent than in most homes, he is apt, before studying 
them, to regard them as matters of course, just as 
uninstructed persons regard light and air; and to realize 
their importance as little. Such indeed is too often 
the state of mind even of persons who take an interest 
in what usually passes for "politics"; and it can 
hardly be called rare even among those holding political 
office. And yet it is certainly true that to civilized 
men, nearly all that makes life worth living, depends 
upon the civic relations, as much as life itself depends 
upon light and air. 

Virtually all good things must be paid for in effort 
and self-control. This is no more true of the foods 
that the simplest savage must gather, and of the portion 
which he must deny himself at the moment, and lay 
away for a rainy day, than it is true of the benefits 
derived from the civic relations in the most advanced 
communities. 

Not all men have the character voluntarily to per- 



2 Preliminary Survey. [§2 

form the labors, and impose upon themselves the con- 
2. Social influence ^rol, called for by their civic responsibili- 
and control! ties: consequently an important element of 

civilization is a set of opinions, usages and institutions 
whose function is to develop and stimulate and control 
men, so as to insure their performance of the duties 
essential to the general well-being. We shall have 
occasion to touch upon nearly all of these opinions, 
usages and institutions, but our space will permit 
detailed attention to but one of them. Before pro- 
ceeding to it, however, we would do well to glance at 
the most important of the others. 

2(a). through the ^irst among thesc is the Family, where 
family; the civic relations begin, and where each 

character that is to play its part in them, well or ill, 
gets its direction and much of its developm.ent. Civic 
relations begin with, and even before, the child's first 
breath; and do not end until the last pennies of what- 
ever estate he may accumulate, are divided among 
his successors. And yet so unconscious of all the facts 
just indicated, are even many intelHgent people, that 
it was lately possible for an eminent, and deservedly 
eminent, authoress, who had been advocating great 
freedom of divorce, when asked: "And how about 
the children?" to answer. "Oh, I had not thought of 
them!" This, however, was before the recent reports 
from city police authorities, notably from those of 
Chicago, gave a most, suggestive illustration of the 
importance of the home, in the fact that an astound- 
ingly large proportion of juvenile (and why not adult ?) 
crime and pauperism is found among the children of 
divorced parents. While the home is generally 

recognized as the chief seat of happiness, its immeasur- 
able importance as the very cornerstone of civilized 
life, is seldom thought of — as seldom as the importance 
of the state holding it together, in spite of alienation 
and wrong, as long as human nature can reasonably 
be called upon to endure the strain. But a full treat- 
ment of this important and neglepted topic cannot 
come within the limits of this treatise. 



§ 2 ^] Society s Control of tlie Individual, 3 

Neither can that of another topic of ahnost equal 
2 (b). through importance and interest — the effect on 
public opinion; civic relations, of general opinion — class 
opinion and public opinion. Class opinion makes the 
heart -wringing question of who a person's associates 
shall be, often depend upon such apparently trivial 
points as the color of a cravat or the handling of a 
table-knife; opinions held in trade-unions extend up 
to such questions as whether a people shall freeze or 
starve, with reason or against reason; public opinion 
is probably a stronger motive than self-respect, in 
making a man keep his clothes brushed; and public 
opinion leads to the payment of more debts, a million 
to one, than the law does. But even the colossal 
influences of opinion on the civic relations, cannot be 
treated here any more fully than can those of the home. . 
2 (c). through There is a third influence in the civic 

imitation; relations, perhaps as powerful as family 

life and public opinion, which deserves mention, but 
can here be given little more, tho it has lately been 
the subject of volumes. I mean imitation — the ten- 
dency to do the things which others do — things all 
the way from, on the one hand, wearing craA^ats, and 
in particular circles, particular cravats, up to respecting 
the integrity of each other's throats inside the cravats; 
but on the other hand, leading peaceable people to 
join in lynchings because others do. 
2 (d). through The coutrol of the civic relations by 

education; education, is worth mentioning, too, but 

cannot be gone into in detail here, tho it v/ill be 
touched upon more than once later. 

Contenting ourselves, then, with the mere mention of 
those four controllers of the civic relations — the family, 
public opinion, imitation and education, let us proceed 
to a fuller treatment of one which, while it is in some re- 
spects more powerful than any, or even all, of the others, 
is fortunately in many respects much easier to under- 
2 (eh through Stand. It is that massing and arranging of 
gouernment. i)^q opinions and powcrs of the people, called 
the Government. In a very primitive community, the 



4 Preliminary Survey/. [§ 2 ^ 

government may seem to be rather the opinions and 
powers of one strong man; but his strength consists in 
bringing under his own control, the faculties of all; 
while in advanced communities, and indeed as a test 
of their advance, the control is less in the hands of one 
or a few, and more in the hands of all. 

Our chief topic, then, tho we shall not avoid the 
others indicated, will be the Civic Relations under Gov- 
ernment. 

3. Civic Relations Probably the intelligent reader will have 
defined. already noticed a gap in the system of 

exposition: I have been writing very freely about the 
civic relations, without having yet attempted to tell, 
with any precision, what they are. The omission was 
not altogether unintentional. The reader's own mind 
has probably extracted from his previous knowledge, 
and from what has already been said, a notion of them 
that it will now be easy for him to make more precise. 
The word relations requires no definition. The word 
civic is one of a group evolved from the Latin word 
civis — a citizen. All the words in the group relate 
to the consequences of people living together in society, 
and they range in meaning from "city" up to the 
"civility" which city life is supposed to breed. It 
may be asked: Why will not "political relations" do? 
Why do we want the comparatively new-fangled word 
"civic"? One reason is that, other things even, two 
syllables are better than four; a better reason is that, 
tho our fortunate language is often enriched by 
both a Latin and a Greek word for the same thing — 
just as we have "civil" and "civility" and their like, 
from civis ; and ' ' political ' ' and ' ' polite ' ' and ' ' polished ' ' 
and their like, from polis, yet the bottom meanings 
of the words "civic" and "political", or "civil" and 
"polite", are not the same. The fact is that when- 
ever we start with both a Latin and a Greek word 
originally meaning the same thing, we soon get to 
applying them to different things. A boor can be 
civil, but it takes a gentleman — a natural one at 



§ 5] Society's Control of the Individual. 5 

least, to be polite — polished; politics really means 
the art of civil government, but perhaps more often 
merely the art of obtaining office or spoils, while civic 
really covers all matters affecting a man as a member 
of society, as distinct from purely personal and domestic 
matters: it embraces all that political does, and, in 
addition, law, economics, sanitation, public education, 
public art, and other subjects, all of which it would 
be a stretch of language to include under politics, tho 
politics may touch them ; but government must touch 
them. We will then define "Civic Relations" to 
mean the relations between people living together, 
especially as they are affected by government. Let 
us approach them, then, through government, by 
the way of a few simple illustrations. 

4. Government's I^ ^ person going out on a bicycle, 
functions illustrated, finds the roads rough or dirty, the fault 
is the government's; if somebody knocks the rider 
down and takes away the bicycle, if the victim could 
obtain no redress, the fault would be the govern- 
ment's; if a foreign enemy in time of war, robbed 
him of his machine, the fault would be the government's ; 
if he bought a bicycle from a man who represented it 
as something different from what it was, in case he 
could not peaceably obtain money equal to his damages, 
or make the exchange for one as represented, the fault 
would be the government's; if he sold the bicycle to a 
person with plenty of money, and could not peaceably 
make him pay, the fault would be the government's. 

5. Government's These cases, if carefully considered, will 
functions classified, "be found to illustrate the two great 
divisions under which the functions of government 
come — the protection of our rights — as against each 
other and against foreign aggression; and the pro- 
motion of the general convenience, as illustrated in the 
roads and other objects of government care. Some 
writers make a third division — the enforcement of 
contracts — like those for buying and selling the bicycle. 
But that really belongs under the head of the protec- 
tion of rights. . 



6 Preliminary Survey. [§ 5 ^ 

Let us now consider more in detail what is meant by 
5 (a). Protection rights and the protection of rights. Every- 
of Rights. one has a right to the safety of his 

person and property, and that people should live up 
to their contracts with him, if he Hves up to his with 
them. It is the business of government to protect 
these rights. Of course protecting rights promotes the 
^(b). Promotion general convenience too, but there are far- 
of Convenience, thcr functious of government, which more 
specifically promote the general convenience. It usu- 
ally lays out the streets and paves and Hghts them, 
regulates buildings so as to guard against fire and, in 
some European cities, so as to secure a reasonable 
amount of sunlight in the streets, and pleasing archi- 
tectural harmony. Government also often provides 
the machinery for putting out fire; regulates the 
liquor traffic so that a man shall not be tempted to 
drink too much, and abuse his family, and perhaps 
commit murder; shuts up stray animals in the pound 
until their ovmers get them; looks after water-supply 
and drainage and pubhc health; provides public schools, 
parks, libraries, and sometimes museums; and coins 
money and carries the mails. The difference between 
all those functions for the public convenience, and the 
protection of rights, is that none of those convenien- 
ces are directly in the nature of protecting person and 
property from attack, or punishing for such attack, nor 
yet of forcing people ta make good their contracts. ^ 

There is still a third class of functions 
5(c). Taxation. ^ggg^^^^i ^^ the performance of the other 

two classes, namely: getting the wherewithal — taxation. 
These three classes — protecting rights, promoting con- 
venience, and getting the money for so doing, through 
taxation, include all the functions of government. 

We have seen, then, that crime, unful- 
fesurof^bad filled contracts, and bad systems of tax- 
Government. ation (which are worse things than the 

novice is apt to reahze) as well as bad roads, bad 
drainage and resulting disease, bad conflagrations 
wide-spread drunkenness, are all the fault of bad 



§ 8] Society's Control of the Individual. 7 

government. Now if such things happen very often 
in a place, of course people will not want to buy prop • 
erty there, and so houses and lots will be sold for 
very little. Yet this works both ways: for while 
bad government has often made prosperous places 
deserted and poor, a return to good government has 
often made such places populous and rich. 
7. Responsibility Therefore, in a free country where 

for bad everybody can vote, if a place suffers 

Government. f^^^ ^^^ government, it must be the 

fault of the people themselves. But why should people 
suffer from bad government, when their own votes 
make the government? For just the same reason 
that people suffer from poverty and disease — usually 
because they are ignorant, self-indulgent, dishonest 
and lazy; sometimes, tho comparatively seldom, because 
they are unfortunate. 

Ignorance leads people to suffer from bad 
mei?t°r°equ]reT'""" government, because government is one of 
KaftSd effort. ^^^ ^^^^ difficult things men undertake, 
' and ignorant people are apt to vote for 
ignorant people to carry it on. They do this not 
only because they do not know any better, but also 
because they prefer to be governed by people of their 
own kind. Ignorant people too often hate to acknowl- 
edge anybody as superior to themselves. It is only as a 
man grows wise, that he grows able to appreciate wis- 
dom in others, especially when it is greater than hisov/n. 

Dishonesty leads people to suffer from bad government, 
because dishonest voters can be bribed, or tempted in 
some other way, to vote for dishonest officers. 

Laziness makes people suffer from bad government, 
because those who know something of what good 
government is, and what capable officers are, are often 
too lazy or too absorbed in their business or pleasure, 
to work to get good government. Many educated 
people do not even vote. Yet we have to work to get 
good government, because there are always many igno- 
rant, dishonest and selfish people working to secure 
bad government True, it is their own government, 



8 Preliminary Survey. [§ 8 

and they have to suffer with the rest of the community, 
but the dishonest and selfish are, at bottom, stupid. 
A dishonest man, no matter how bright he may be in 
some ways, is always at bottom just what Solomon says 
he is — a fool. This, too, despite the fact that dishonest 
men often get rich and powerful. But frequent as such 
facts are, they are far from being the rule. Many suc- 
cessful dishonest men have plainly shown that they 
were miserable, and it is fair to believe that at bottom 
they generally are. A great artist who had painted 
the portrait of a rich scoundrel, said that the face was 
the most miserable he had ever seen. On the other 
hand, if such people are poor (and dishonest people are 
not apt to get rich) they generally sell their votes, sup- 
posing that the money they get for them, or the favors 
they expect if their friends are put in power, will be 
worth more to them than good government would be. 
Probably if all could be known, it would be found that 
they never estimate correctly. No sensible man would 
think that, any other human thing can help him do the 
best for himself, as much as good government does: 
for government affects almost everything a man does. 
9= Extent of Govern- I't decides whether every step he takes and 
ment's influence. every wheel he rolls, shall go with comfort 
or with difficulty, whether every cent he spends shall 
be spent to good advantage or poor, whether every 
second he lives shall be one of danger or security, and, 
in cities, whether every breath he takes shall be health- 
giving or dangerous. 

9 (ah Illustrated So far, wc havc barely alluded to the 
by Money. moucy which is Spent by the government. 
But the government affects the worth of all money — 
determines to a great extent how much a man shall 
get for every cent he spends. If a government is honest 
and capable, its expenses will be low in proportion to 
the good it does: so taxes will be low, and taxes enter 
into the cost of everything — a landlord has to pay 
taxes on a store, for instance, and adds them to the rent; 
and so the storekeeper has to add them to the prices 
of the goods sold in the store. Thus prices will be 



§ ii] Society's Control of the Individual. 9 

made high by high taxes, and each man gets less for his 
money. 

Moreover: government manufactures the money, and 
if it manufactures bad money (as ours has done twice 
since i860), a man cannot buy as much as he ought to 
with it. 

GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS OF GOVERNMENT. 

.f. r u u- So far, we have spoken of government 

10. Lach citizen -r -, -, • ■ 

lives under several as ii it were but one organization — as 11 we 
^governments. j-^^^ under but one government. But 

Americans generally live under at least four — local, 
county, state and national. How much territory the 
local government covers, mainly depends on the thick- 
ness of the population. In New England and the 
Middle States, the local government generally covers 
a township, but often only a village or a city. In the 
Western and Southern States the local government often 
covers a whole county, or even more. We should note, 
in passing, the most striking differences between a town, 
a city and a village. A village or a city is always a 
collection of buildings; a town (in the American sense, 
not the English) may contain no buildings at all, or only 
scattered ones, or it may contain villages or even cities. 
A city is sometimics called a town, but that is only a 
fashion of speaking, just as men, women and children 
are alluded to as part of mankind. Although Americans 
generally live under at least four governments, they 
sometimes live under more — under both town and vil- 
.. ^ I . laee, or city, TOvernment, as well as county, 

11. Overiappings ° ' ^ -^ ' ^. . r^ , • . 

of local gov- state and national. Sometimes, too, even 

ernments. ^^^ school districts of a town attend to 

more of its local affairs than merely those of the school, 
and really constitute additional governments. On the 
other hand, sometimes the whole township is covered by 
a city, and even, in rare cases, it has both a town gov- 
ernment and a city government. Generally, t ho, in such 
cases, the city government replaces the town govern- 
ment. But when the city covers the whole county, as a 



lo Preliminary Survey. [§ii 

few of our leading cities do, both city and county govern- 
ments generally continue side by side. On the other 
hand, in very thinly populated regions, something like 
the reverse occurs — the county is sometimes the smallest 
political unit, and performs what functions of a local 
government are necessary. Then people live under but 
three governments — county, state and national. 

12. Functions of Ordinarily, local governments do (or 
local government, neglect to do) the laying out of such 
streets and roads as are too short to come under the 
jurisdiction of the wider governments; and do what- 
ever grading, paving, sewering, sidewalking and policing 
the streets and roads may have. They also punish 
such offences and settle such disputes as are too petty 
to come before the wider governments ; regulate building 
and protect against fire; sell licenses for some trades; 
look after the schools and the poor and sick; grant 
permits (in thickly populated regions) for public vehicles ; 
and sometimes supply water, light and other conve- 
niences, or else grant franchises to companies that do 
supply them. 

13. Of County '^^^ county is mainly an organization 
government. for the administration of justice better than 
it could be done by smaller local governments. The 
county generally provides better courts, jails and often 
almshouses and hospitals, than the minor governments 
could afford, and gives all its localities the use of them. 
At the county seat, too, it generally keeps the records of 
the real-estate transfers, and other important documents. 
The county also sees that the longer roads are properly 
laid out and cared for. When a city overgrows the 
county, and there are no little local governments, there 
is still need for all the more elaborate courts, records, 
etc., and the county government is generally kept up 
along with the city government. 

14. Of State gov- Of the state government, some people in 
ernment. the cities are beginning to say that its 
main function is really to enable the country to milk 
the cities — to give country legislators, who are in 
the majority, the chance to lay an undue share of 



§ 15] Society's Control of the Individual. 11 

the state's taxes onto the cities, and to give them 
also the chance to get bought off (or on) regarding all 
sorts of legislative "strikes" against the cities. What 
the state government professes to do, however, is, in 
regard to justice, something for the counties like what 
the counties do for their small local governments — it 
provides a high and expensive grade of courts to which 
important cases can be taken from all over the state, 
especially cases that are appealed from the lower courts. 
It also provides prisons, and often reformatories and 
insane asylums, better than any that any one county 
could ordinarily support; it regulates the roads and 
railroads that pass through several counties; and what 
is most important of all, it passes laws regulating per- 
sonal rights and property rights over the whole state, 
so that if a man wishes, he can deal safely with a neigh- 
bor who lives, or owns a piece of property, more than a 
mile or two from the place the former lives in, because 
the same law judges for both, if any difficulty arises. 

All the local and county governments can pass only 
such ordinances, and judge only in accordance with 
such laws, as the state government approves — in short, 
the state government controls them. 

Now the state government itself is not, like the 
local and county governments, under the control of 
15. Of National ^^Y higher government, except in the par- 
government, ticulars . where it has combined with the 
other states to make the nation. In so doing, 
each state gave up to the nation a carefully specified 
portion of its powers, but reserved all the others. 
There is a pretty distinct line between those given 
up and those reserved. Roughly speaking, there 
are but two fields in which the citizen's rights are 
regulated, not by the state, but by the nation: first, 
so far as his rights are affected by other nations; and 
second, as we shall see more particularly hereafter, so 
far as they come under certain broad principles of 
liberty which the United States is to maintain if any 
state should fail to do so. But these principles have 
become so much matters of course in the Anglo-Saxon 



12 Preliminary Survey. [§ 15 

race, that probably there is not one case in a hundred 
where a man's rights are not practically under the 
care of his state rather than of the nation. In the vast 
majority of cases, the state is still sovereign, as it was 
originally — so entirely that the terms "government" 
and "state" are still interchangeable. 

The expression "roughly speaking" may have been 
noticed in the last paragraph, and it is well worth 
while to realize before we go deeper, that Civics can- 
not be as exact as Mathematics. Our civic relations 
depend on human nature — the most complex and un- 
certain topic we know anything about — and upon 
human nature in many men, at that. So many influ- 
ences are at work, that there are apt to be different 
elements in cases that appear alike; and therefore 
such cases sometimes turn out very differently. But 
investigators have found plenty of principles that are 
true in most cases — but true only ' ' roughly speaking ' ' , 
or "by and large". We will generally take the excep- 
tions for granted, however, and not stop too often 
to allude to them. But just here we are met by a 
very important fundamental question, to which the 
best answers yet framed, are found to be "in the 
rough", or "by and large". A few lines back is the 
,., , „ . , expression: "the state is still sovereign". 

15 (a). Sovereignty, at i, - j • r, a 

l\ow what does sovereign mean.? As a 
noun and an adjective, its meanings differ. The king of 
England is a sovereign, and yet he is not sovereign, but 
the people are. The Czar of Russia or "the king of the 
cannibal islands" is both a sovereign and sovereign. 

Our national government, as already said, is sovereign 
over the states only in certain particulars carefully 
specified in the Constitution. But through that sover- 
eignty, it makes the United States a great and power- 
ful nation, instead of a group of little states on any 
one of which any petty nation could impose, and 
which would be apt to impose upon one another. To 
prevent that, the national government provides courts 
before which, for instance, "little Rhody" may obtain 
justice in any dispute with big New York ; and it also 



§ 1 6] Society's Control of the IndividtiaL 13 

regulates commerce between the states. The govern- 
ment of the United States as a great nation, regulates 
our relations of commerce, peace and war, with all 
other nations. Hence it provides custom-houses, and 
arm.y and navy; makes laws regarding naturalization 
of foreigners; and protects our citizens trading or 
traveling in foreign lands. It also guards the coast, 
by lighthouses and harbor improvements as well as 
by ships and forts. Moreover, as it is a great con- 
venience to have the same money, the same weights 
and measures, and the same mails, over all the states, 
the national government provides and regulates them. 
It also secures to inventors and authors the fruits 
of their labors by patent and copyright laws good 
over the whole of the United States, and has arranged 
for like security over most foreign civilized territory. 

DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT. 

16. Legislative, ^^ miUch for a hasty preliminary sur- 

Judicial, Executive, vey of our various American governments 
as geographically determined. Now let us take a 
similar glance at their individual make-up. Roughly 
speaking, they have these prominent features in com- 
mon with each other and with all civilized govern- 
ments: — they make laws, decide what laws apply to 
particular situations, and see that those laws are carried 
out. Those three functions are called Legislative, Ju- 
dicial and Executive. 

Now to understand these three functions of govern- 
ment, let us inquire: What is the advantage of having 
rights protected by government? Does not every man 
understand his own rights better than anybody else 
can ? Why not leave each man to take care of himself ? 
The bottom reason perhaps is in the answer to the 
second of those three questions. So far from it being 
true that every man understands his own rights, it is 
proverbially true that no man is a fit judge in his 
own cause: so one of the most important functions 
of government — a subdivision of its protection of 



14 Preliminary Survey. [§ i6 

rights, is providing unprejudiced judges to determine, 
when a man's rights are in dispute, what they really 
are. 

But after courts, v/ith judges and juries, have deter- 
mined what a man's rights are, why not let him go 
for them himself? Because it would depend largely 
on the size of the other man whether he would get 
them, and nearly every lawsuit would end in a fight, 
perhaps a killing, perhaps a long family vendetta. 
They did so quite generally in the first few hundred 
years where we get glimpses of the ways of our Saxon 
and Norman ancestors, and still do in the primitive 
parts of our country, and in primitive countries gen- 
erally. It would be almost as well to have the fighting 
come before the lawsuit as after it, and save the ex- 
pense of the suit. 

To make the machinery for finding judgment of 
much use, there must be machinery for executing it, 
and machinery so powerful that the losing side would 
not think of resisting. In advanced societies, this power 
17, Sources of IS that of the whole community, behind 
Government. the officers of the law. In our own coun- 

try, the humblest rural constable can call upon every 
citizen at hand, to help him enforce the law. If they 
cannot do it, he can send for all officers within reach, 
with such citizens as they can bring; if the resistance 
is still too strong, he can call upon the governor for 
every militia company in the state; if the resistance is 
too strong for them, the governor can call upon the 
President of the United States for its whole army and 
navy; and if they are not large enough, the government 
can enlarge them until every loyal citizen is in the ranks. 

If not enough citizens are loyal, of course the affair 
would amount to a revolution, and the resisting side 
would overcome the government and set up a new one. 
In fact, when people, like our neighbors in South 
America or our friends in France, get into an uneasy 
state, revolutions sometimes start in that way — in some 
petty quarrel, and spread until the whole state is in- 
volved. But in such cases, the community must already 



§ 1 8] Society's Control of the Individual. 15 

have been in irritated division over the question at 
issue. 

But great as is the need for a judicial department to 
determine rights, and for a strong executive to protect 
them and enforce duties, there is another reason almost 
as good, and in some aspects better, why a strong execu- 
tive is needed. If the executive is strong, there is very- 
little protecting or enforcing needed. People come down 
quietly, as the 'coon did when he saw that the man be- 
hind the gun was Davy Crockett; and what is more 
important still, they do not go up — they behave them- 
selves generally, because they know it will not pay to 
do anything else. 

We seem to have found reasons enough for the judicial 
and executive departments of government, but in a 
primitive government, there are not even that many 
departments; the chief, with the men he can get to 
do his will, is the whole establishment; but a govern- 
ment highly organized (or highly differentiated, as 
the philosophers say) is split up not merely into the 
two departments we have already found necessary, but 
also into a third — the legislative, which makes many 
of the laws that the other two departments respectively 
judge under, and execute. A separate legislative 
department is always the last one evolved : for the priests 
always make a judicial department early; but the chief 
ruler — king or whatever he may be, always keeps the 
law-making power in his own hands as long as he can. 
He still holds it in Russia and Turkey. 

Now to illustrate how the three depart- 
d^partmentfillus- ments work, take the man going out on his 
trated in civil and bicycle. He breaks his wheel because of 

criminal suits. ,^-' . r.i 1.-- j_ 

the roughness of the road, tries to get 
redress, and proceeds to sue somebody. He finds out 
that under laws passed by the state legislature, it was 
the duty of the men owning on the sides of that particular 
road, to keep it in order: that is step first — a law has 
been passed. Now it needs to be applied to the case: 
our bicyclist goes to the man owning on the side of the 
road where the damage was done, and the man says : "I 



1 6 Preliminary Survey. [§ iS 

don't take care of one side of the road. My opposite 
neighbor and I agreed to divide it lengthwise. We 
take fifty yards apiece. Your accident occurred on 
his fifty yards." But the neighbor says: "Nonsense: 
the accident did not occur on my portion of the road: 
I won't pay.' Then the bicychst may have to go to 
court to see which man is responsible. That is step 
second — determining how the law fits the case. When 
the judge, after hearing all the evidence, determines 
that point, he may decree that one man or the other 
owes the bicyclist ten dollars. Then comes in the third 
step — executing the law: if the man does not pay, the 
sheriff comes in and sells some of his property, and pays 
the bicyclist out of the proceeds ; and so are finished up 
the three general functions of government — providing 
the law, fitting it to a case, and enforcing it. Such a 
suit, when nobody is on trial for a crime, is called 
a civil suit. 

Now to illustrate a criminal trial: Somebody knocks 
the bicychst down, and takes his wheel. The state 
government has provided laws (step first) punishing 
violence and robbery. The local government has a 
policeman or constable to arrest the offender; it has 
also a magistrate to determine what laws he has violated, 
and whether the punishment they decree is one of the 
slight ones that a local magistrate can inflict, or whether 
his case is so serious that it must be tried in a more 
important county court. After the offender is tried 
in one or the other, and the law in his particular case 
is declared (step second) and his punishment is decreed, 
the third step is taken — the law is executed — the local 
policeman locks him in the station-house for a day or 
two, or the county sheriff takes him to jail for perhaps 
a month, or the state officer receives him into the 
penitentiary for a longer period. 

In Am^erica, the town government, or 
dkiaU^nf&tiv'e sometimes the county, is generahy ^ first 
functions in local evolved. Either of them starts in a 
governmen . mere collection of farms. At first, all the 

voters get together to legislate; they also select a magis- 



§ 2o] Society's Control of the Individual. 17 

trate to judge in disputes and crimes, and a board of 
''selectmen " (generally three), and perhaps a constable, 
to execute or administer the laws. 

As population increases, so many questions arise 
that people generally cannot come together often 
enough to settle them all. Moreover, when there are 
very many people, they cannot hear each other speak, 
and cannot readily count the votes. Under such cir- 
cumstances, they usually divide up into smaller bodies, 
each of which elects one man to represent it in a gather- 
ing of all the representatives, and there to decide 
matters of government for all the people. Thus a 
village generally legislates through a representative 
board of trustees, who pass ordinances about the 
streets, bridges, local health, etc., but they must do 
this in accordance with general laws laid down by 
the state legislature. A village also has its own magis- 
trates to judge under the state laws determining per- 
sonal and property rights : thus ' they settle petty 
quarrels and punish petty offences, or send the offenders 
to higher county or state courts. The village also 
has an executive or administrative head (the terms execu- 
tive and administrative are interchangeable), in the 
president of the board of trustees, who is assisted by 
commissioners for streets, fires, health, etc., to execute 
the ordinances of the board of trustees (legislative de- 
partment), and the president is also helped by police- 
men or constables to execute the decrees of the magis- 
trates (judicial department). 

A city government is generally composed of legis- 
lative bodies (known in different places as aldermen, 
councilmen, etc.) — sometimes of two chambers, to 
pass laws regarding local matters; of judicial courts 
as well — not only those of the magistrates, but addi- 
tional ones of a higher grade; and a mayor with a 
considerable body of assistants to see that the laws 
are executed. 

20. The functions ^^^^ counties do not have any law- 
in Counties. making assemblies for the direct purpose 

of legislation, tho the bodies known as Supervisors 



1 8 * Preliminary Survey. [§20 

or Commissioners really have considerable legisla- 
tive power over taxes, roads, care of the poor, etc. 
Generally speaking, however, outside of these officers, 
county governments are, as said before, merely organi- 
zations for the administration of justice. They have 
no law-making body, but only two sets of function- 
aries — the judicial, consisting of judges of courts and 
their assistants, to apply the laws which the state 
legislature makes, and to record legal documents; 
and also twofold executive bodies: first, the sheriff 
and his assistants, to carry out the law after the courts 
declare what it requires in each case; and second, 
commissioners to care for the roads, court-houses and 
other county buildings. 

The state governm.ent has the '' full 

21. The three func- kit" — legislative, judicial and executive. 

The legislature generally (universally, so 
far as I know) consists of two bodies, both of which 
have to concur to pass a law: their laws provide 
for the care of person and property over the whole 
state, and are applied by local magistrates, city courts, 
and county courts. Then the state has its judicial 
bodies — the state courts, which generally hear cases 
appealed from the county courts, and also determine 
whether laws passed by the legislature are according 
to the agreement of the people under which the state 
was primarily organized (generally called the Consti- 
tution, 79 *) ; and the state has also its executive 
body — the governor and his various assistants, who 
see that the general laws passed by the legislature, 
and the particular applications of them determined 
by the judiciary, are executed. Some state govern- 
m.ents can remove local officers who fail in this regard. 

„„ TL The United States government has the 

22. The same . , . ^.f' . ^. j-, , 
functions in the same general tripartite organization that 

'^^*'°"' the minor governments have — the legis- 

lative body, consisting of two houses of congress; the 
judicial body, consisting of United States courts 

* The cross-references indicate numbered sections, not pages. 



§2 2] Society's Control of the Individual. 



19 



scattered all over the country, and a supreme court 
at Washington to try appeals from them; and finally 
an executive body to carr}^ out the laws and the deci- 
sions of the courts. This executive body consists of 
the president; his cabinet; all the national civil ser- 
vice in the departments at Washington, in the mints, 
custom-houses and post-offices, all over the country; 
the army and navy; the lighthouse and coast life- 
saving service ; and many other divisions. 



BOOK I. 

THE PROTECTION OF RIGHTS. 
CHAPTER II. 

OF RIGHTS IN GENERAL. 

Of the three general functions of government — pro- 
tecting rights (including protecting them against a 
foreign enemy), promoting convenience, and taxing 
for its own maintenance, protecting rights was evolved 
first, because, in early societies, before some progress 
has been made in civilization, there are no conveni- 
ences to promote. A result, then, on the body of 
Law and Political Science evolved even up to our 
day, is that it deals mainly with rights. The functions 
of government in promoting the public convenience 
have been evolved so late in comparison, that they 
are not nearly so clearly understood; in fact, com- 
paratively little attention was paid to them before 
the middle of the nineteenth century. 
23. Rights Impose First, then, to take the greater field — that 
duties. of rights, let us try to understand the in- 

teresting fact that all rights impose duties — duties on 
others, and also duties on oneself. They impose duties 
on others, because a right is, of course, a power justly to 
demand that somebody shall do something or refrain 
from doing something; and this doing or refraining 
on the part of somebody, in response to a right de- 
manded, is of course a duty. 

21 



22 The Protection of Rights. [§24 

Whether the demand and consequent obhgation are 

just, is determined by "the greatest good 

24. " Greatest hap- of the greatest number". What that is, 
niness" princip e --iij a. 1 • n v- 1/ 

and its application IS declared not only m all religions, but 

of law.*^""^^ '^'"'^^ by the general experience of mankind. 
But the religions differ, and so do the 
opinions of mankind. Who, then, shall judge? 
Each nation has its own dominant religion and domi- 
nant opinions. In proportion to the advance of a 
nation, its opinions, religious and secular (which gener- 
ally correspond pretty closely), are embodied in cus- 
toms and laws. Of course men's convictions of right 
must be matured before laws are made to enforce 
them: so there are always moral rights acknowledged 
by good men, which have not yet become legal rights. 
As fast as legal rights are established, priests and 
judges apply them to the cases that come before them, 
being guided, in very advanced races, by a body of 
Law made up, (first) of recorded opinions and enact- 
ments that have been applied to similar cases, and 
piecing out such opinions to fit new cases. The body 
of these opinions is called with us the common law; 
(second) of statutes passed by law-making bodies, called 
statute law; and (third) of decisions and practices 
(like those of the treasury, the custom-house, and the 
post-office) arising in the course of executing the laws. 
The body of these last is called the administrative 
law. Thus rights and duties are declared and enlarged, 
and the power of the whole society, directed by the 
government, is exerted to defend the rights and enforce 
the duties. 

Yet priests, judges, legislators and rulers are human, 
and the system and its workings are hampered by 
human imperfections. They have improved immensely, 
however, in recorded history, and, taking the race 
by and large, are improving every day. The plain 
way of improving them faster among us, is by improving 
each man's sense of civic duty — so he will follovv^ only 
wise priests, and vote for only good judges, legislators 
and rulers — if that is a "plain way". If such persons 



§ 26] Of Rights in General. 23 

were always m authority, they would keep legal rights 
closer up to the best convictions of moral rights. 

25. Rights and One's rights impose duties not only on 
duties imply each others, but also on oneself , because a man 

"*' cannot justly expect other people to 

grant his rights unless he grants theirs. He can assert 
a right to life or property, for instance, only as he 
performs the duty of granting other people their rights 
to life and property. Why a man's rights are measured 
by his duties, we do not know, any more than we know 
why two and two make four. It is a law of Nature, 
proved by all human experience. Justice must be 
reciprocal — must be even to both sides: the goddess 
holds the scales. The statements of that law that 
have most influenced the civilized world are, "Do 
unto others as you v/ould they should do unto you", 
and "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us." 

26. Rights The rights for which our fathers de- 
classified, manded government protection, were 
summed up in the Declaration of Independence, as 
the rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happi- 
ness. There might easily be a worse classification. 
But classification suggests the idea of scientific treat- 
ment. Now as these rights seem to spread everywhere, 
and yet as you cannot touch or see them, as you can 
a plant or an animal or a star, the idea of giving 
them any scientific treatment may seem impracticable 
to readers who have associated science only with tan- 
gible and visible things. Yet what we know about 
them can be given scientific arrangement, and that 
is all we can give to what we know of any subject. As 
to "scientific precision", however, of course we can 
know some things more precisely than we can others — 
simple things more precisely than complex things — 
things of sense more precisely than affairs of thought 
and feeling. For instance: the most precise science 
of all — mathematics, deals with the simplest things, 
mere quantity and position, without any reference 



24 The Protection of Rights. [§26 

whatever to the infinite number of conditions which, 
for instance, make the difference between a human 
being and a stone of the same shape. Again, as a 
stone is simpler than a plant, we have a more pre- 
cise science of stones than of plants; and for the same 
reasons, of plants than of animals; of the lower ani- 
mals than of the higher; of the animal's body more 
than of his mind; and of the individual animal's 
mind more than of the interplay of a number of minds. 
So we have got to be content with less precision, and 
consequently more difference of opinion, in studying 
the interplay of men's souls — their social relations, 
than in studying almost anything else. Yet we can 
make a science of them, as I said before, precisely 
as we make a science of anything else, by getting 
what knowledge we can, classifying it as best we can, 
and using our system to help us to more knowledge. 

To begin, then: Rights are usually first classified for 
scientific treatment into Rights regarding Persons 
and Rights regarding Things. At first sight, the 
Declaration of Independence hardly followed that 
classification, but it virtually did: for the rights to 
Life and Liberty are plainly rights regarding Persons — 
as against attacks from them, and as embracing duties 
toward them; and under the rights to the Pursuit of 
Happiness, we can easily treat separately those re- 
lating to persons, and those relating to things. 

Personal rights are sometimes regarded as rights 
affecting one's own person, as distinct from rights 
affecting one's property. The classifications cross in 
some particulars, as nearly all classifications do; but 
while, in this case, one may be no better than the 
other, we may as well follow the lines laid down by 
our fathers. 



CHAPTER III. 

RIGHT TO LIFE. 

27. The State's The right to life seems too plain to 
claims. discuss, and yet the state need not always 
preserve its citizens' lives, but on the contrary, it 
often demands them — ^by thousands at a time, in 
war for its own defence, and even (rightly or wrongly) 
for its own extension. But even then, it is the state's 
duty to guard the lives as well as circumstances per- 
mit — to give its soldiers the best possible care: — to 
give them such officers, surgeons, arms, food, and 
attention of every kind as will bring their lives through 
war if it is a possible thing. 

The state also demands life in other ways than in 
war. Under the laws of most states, a citizen for- 
feits his right to his life when he does not perform the 
duty on which that right rests. If he neglects that 
duty, and kills somebody else, his right not to be killed 
is gone, and the state may kill him if it sees fit. 

28. Humanity's -^ man has not always a right to his 
claims. {{(q^ even outside of the state's demands 
on it in war or for justice: it is often a man's duty 
to risk it for those he loves, and in helping others in 
danger of their lives; and not only soldiers, but doc- 
tors, chemists, miners, engineers and many others, 

29. Professional ni'^st risk their lives to do their mere 
claims. duty in the professions they have chosen. 
They cannot turn back from danger when other peo- 
ple's lives are in their hands. The time to turn back is 
before adopting one of the heroic professions — before 

25 



26 The Protection of Rights. [§29 

subordinating their rights to life, to their strenuous 
duties. 

In some countries, Nature, unaided by 

30. Life and work, ^j^g efforts of men, supplies the essen- 
tials of life, and even the young reader need hardly 
be reminded that in such countries Nature is an over- 
indulgent parent, who spoils her children, and does 
not lead them to civilization. Civilization comes 
from work, and no country has ever become civilized, 
and therefore (on the very strongest ground we have 
for any expectation) no country ever can become 
civilized, where life itself does not depend on work, 
and where the right to life does not depend upon the 
right to work; and where, accordingly, the right to 
work is, to all but those dependent on others, of as 
much importance as the right to life. 

31. The Right -^^^ Y^^ ^Y °^® °^ those strange and 
to Work. instructive paradoxes which the thought- 
ful observer is continually noticing, in the countries 
where the right to life is most effectively guarded, the 
right to work is most generally attacked. One of 
the instructions in this paradox is that, as intelli- 
gence and the effectiveness of law advance, the absurdity, 
not to say the criminality, of attacking the right to 
work, advances with them. This may help us esti- 
mate the reasonableness and morality of both the 
American trade-union's claim that if a man will not 
join it, it can properly interfere with his right to work; 
and its practice, if he does not obey its demands, of 
burning his house and taking his life. 

But it has just been seen that the community has a 
right to a man's work, even in the most dangerous of all 
pursuits — in war, and even to his life itself, 
^^'^°t ^"h'JVtate ^^^^ ^^^ state requires either or both for 
ony e a . ^^^ greatest good of the greatest number. 
The trade-union justifies its claim on the same ground — 
the greatest good of the greatest number. In doing 
this, as the intelligent reader has probably realized, it 
simply performs the saltum of assuming itself to be 



§ 31 ^] Right to Life. 27 

"the greatest number" — the state itself, or really, as 
it often assumes, the superior of the state — a saltum 
which we see it repeating in some connection every day. 

Any trade-union is a ridiculously insignificant por- 
tion of the state, all of the trade-unionists put together 
with their wives and children, are less than an eighth 
of the state, and what they may think for their great- 
est good, may be for anything hut "the greatest good of 
the greatest number ", as they are constantly demonstra- 
ting by stopping the transit and supplies of the greatest 
number, and filling the streets of the greatest number 
with riot, arson, bloodshed and murder. 

Probably every war has been based on some similar 
perversion of logic. Over this one, here and there in 
America, civil war has been for some time cropping 
out in little skirmishes between unionists and their 
attendant hoodlums on one side, and the militia — 
sometimes even the army — on the other; and there 
are sober judges who look for an increase of it. Even 
the greatest philosopher of our time — and perhaps 
of any time, as he had more experience behind him 
than any previous philosopher — thought that the 
fallacy we have been treating, and the others vaguely 
grouped with it under various vague names (one of 
which vague names is socialism), will eventually pre- 
vail in their chronic war with intelligence; that the 
victory will be the greatest disaster so far experienced 
by mankind ; and that the first step toward recovery 
will be military despotism. But Spencer's unsurpassed, 
perhaps unequalled, greatness, was in the impartial 
grouping of passionless facts — a purely intellectual 
process, where there was little room for the bias of 
temperament. This pessimistic prophecy of his, on 
the other hand, tho it dealt with a relatively small 
group of facts, found every one of them hot with con- 
troversy; and the interpretation of them was that 
of an old and lonely man whose attitude toward life 
had never had the hope-giving influence of children. 
It is not inconsistent therefore with the profoundest 
loyalty toward his philosophy, to take a more hopeful 



28 The Protection of Rights. [§ 31 ^ 

view than he did regarding this passion-laden and 
(compared with his cosmic generaHzations) minor 
question, and to find much hope in the already visible 
effects of very recent counter-organization and appeal 
to the courts. 

31 (b). Picketing The courts try to guard the Right to 
and Boycotting. Work, as they guard any other right. 
They are now attacking both picketing and boy- 
cotting, but there are thousands of ways of making 
a man's life uncomfortable, and so interfering with 
his liberty, that the law cannot take hold of. 

If the people on whom a man depends for business 
or companionship, conclude merely not to have any- 
thing to do with him, it is pretty difficult for the govern- 
ment to force them to. A marked case was in 1899, 
when the workmen in Worcester, Mass., would not 
go to see the local baseball club play, unless it dis- 
charged a man who years before had refused to join 
in a labor strike. The courts could hardly force people 
to go to see baseball. Yet the law has done much, as 
will appear later. 

A workingman can avoid all this trouble by joining 
the trade-union and sticking by it, but if he is not free 
to join or not, as he pleases, he has no liberty. It 
is as much government's duty to protect him in this 
liberty as in any other. 

,. Moreover, when a man claims the 

tioning the Right Right to Work, of course he confesses 
to Work. certain duties. The most obvious of 

these are not to interfere with any other man's Right 
to Work; and to do his own work honestly. Under 
the first head, the effort to force men to stand idle 
when others strike, is not only an attack on others' 
Right to Work, in the very act of asserting the same 
right for oneself; but what is more ridiculous, if pos- 
sible, it is an assertion that the strike on hand has 
not justification enough to stand by itself, without 
being held up by force. 

The other duty of a man claiming the Right to 



§ 34] R'i'ght to Life. 29 

Work, was said to be to work honestly. In asserting 
that right, he confesses this duty not only to his em- 
ployer, but also to society, because he calls upon society 
to protect him in his Right to Work. Society, which 
buys the laborer's product, really pays him his wages, 
and has a right to its money's worth. 

33. Society's Beyond society's duty to protect the 

alieg_ed Duty to Right to Work from interference, it has 
Provide Vrork. ^^^^ claimed that society shall find work 
for anybody needing it. But there is a vital difference 
in the two things — to protect a man from being inter- 
fered with in seeking honest work,' is to secure him his 
right to pursue his own happiness; while for society 
to find work for him, is to take a share of the pursuit 
of his happiness upon itself. 

A more detailed treatment of this whole subject, 
will be given in a later special chapter on Labor Coer- 
cion, and in one on Labor and the Law. 

Universal experience has shown that if government 
attempts to do any more for people's work than to 
see that they are not interfered with, people get to 
depending upon government instead of upon them- 
selves, become shiftless and lazy, and ultimately expect 
government to feed and clothe them and do every- 
thing else for them, without their doing any work. 
34 Th E o-li h Probably the most conspicuous demon- 

Poor Law and the strations of this were the working of the 
French workshops. E^ghsh Poor Law in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, and of the French public workshops established 
after the revolution of 1848. 

The Poor Law of 1782 required the guardians of the 
poor to find work for everybody who did not find it 
for himself, and to support him until they did. It 
set the lazy all over the country to living at the ex- 
pense of the industrious, and to raising large families 
to get the benefit of the government dole for those 
who were too young to work. In 1834, England had 
to return to the old system of supporting only those 
who were willing to live in the workhouses, and then 



30 The Protection of Rights. [§34 

people generally became able to find themselves work, 
and the birth-rate among the useless classes diminished. 

A person receiving relief from the state was dis- 
franchised. When this book goes to press in 1907, 
bills are pending with every prospect of passage — per- 
haps some have been passed — to give meals to school 
children without disfranchising their fathers. Old-age 
pensions are expected next. The extension of the 
suffrage since the repeal of the Poor Law, has inclined 
politicians to curry favor with the poor, and similar 
"relief" will probably be extended until new repeals 
will be found necessary. 

The experience in the French workshops was that 
men would not hunt for work elsewhere, but flocked 
to them; other industries became disorganized; the 
officials could not turn away a man who claimed from 
the state the Right to Work; shops were filled faster 
than they could be built; but as the laborers felt sure 
of their places, they worked carelessly, and soon the 
whole thing had to be given up. 

An attempt has been made to insure people against 
loss of work. But even that is risky. When Germany 
forced its railroad employees to insure themselves even 
against accident, they became careless, and slow to 
return to work after being laid up. 

The moral of all this is that there is no way of super- 
seding Nature's method of advancing man, which is by 
forcing him to depend upon himself. Every effort to 
relieve him of that responsibility has led to his deterio- 
ration. 

But human arrangements are not per- 
35, Public Charity. £g^^_ There often come times of business 
depression, when many deserving people who are per- 
fectly willing to work, can find nothing to do. But 
that is a question of an occasional emergency, and 
not^of the usual state of affairs ; and it is more a ques- 
tion of public charity than of public justice. Public 
charity should be reserved for only grave emergencies, 
otherwise it does more harm than good. This is 
illustrated by the experience with public kitchens, 



§35] ■ Rk^'ii to Life, ■ 31 

soup-houses, and methods of rehef of all kinds that 
have been thrown open to all comers. Unless such 
help has been restricted to those whom careful inves- 
tigation proves unable, for the time, to take care of 
themselves, it has spread idleness and beggary among 
people perfectly able to provide for themselves if 
obliged to. That has always been the case, tho it has 
sometimes appeared otherwise: for instance, after the 
great period of enforced idleness of '97^ there was a 
very encouraging evidence that of late years people 
have been growing in self-reliance. When the unem- 
ployed began to get work again, at least one of the 
free-food depots was shut up because nobody applied. 
Whether it was a less attractive place than the others 
does not appear. But it was opened in an emergency, 
understood to be only for an emergency, and sup- 
ported only by voluntary private contributions; there- 
fore people did not depend on it as they did on the 
French workshops. 



CHAPTER IV. 



LIBERTY. 



The right to Hfe, with its concomitant right to work, 
in a sense belongs under rights to Hberty. But the first 
two are so fundamental as to justify being in a class 
by themselves: they can exist in the absence of all 
other rights, while in the absence of them, no other 
rights can exist. 

36. Boundaries There are many definitions of liberty, as 

of Liberty. of most other important things. Probably 

as good a one as any, is absence of restraint in the exer- 
cise of one's rights. This of course cannot mean free- 
dom to do as one pleases: for no man is at liberty to 
do- as he pleases, if it interferes with another man's 
right to do any innocent thing that he pleases. Let us 
take some illustrative cases. If I should please to stop 
a man striking a woman, I would have a right to do it, 
altho it would interfere with his doing as he pleased: 
for his doing as he pleased in that way, would be inter- 
fering with her doing as she pleased — with her enjoying 
freedom from pain and injury. If she were his 
wife, and were wasting his substance, she would be 
interfering with his doing as he pleased with his money. 
But if she were a hard-working woman, and he pleased 
to waste the money, he would be interfering with her 
right to do as she pleased with it. But how could 
they each have a right to do what they pleased with 
it, when each might want to do something different 
from the other? Each would have the right, but it 
would be limited, as was said a moment ago, by the 

32 



§37] Liberty. 33 

other's right. To determine how people are to 
settle their rights when they conflict in this way, is 
one of the things that the state is for; but if people 
cannot settle their rights by themselves or with the 
help of their friends, they should resort to law, not 
to fisticuffs. 

When people are living together, then, it seems as 
if the liberty of each must be somewhat curtailed 
by the rights of the others. This is by no means 
restricted to husband and wife: all people living near 
enough to affect each other, must have their liberty 
somewhat limited by the rights of the others, A 
2^ P , . ^ man living alone in a forest would be at 
Liberty and civilized liberty to shout and sing and fire his gun 
^^^''^y* at any time of night, and shoot in any 

direction. But if he were living in a community, such 
conduct would very properly send him to the lockup. 
Under proper conditions, however, one can shout and 
sing or fire a gun in the city. 

The name given to the conditions that limit the 
exercise of rights, is duties, as already said. If a man 
claims the liberty to shout, sing and fire a gun in 
the city, he has the duties of doing it only at proper 
times and places — ordinarily in enclosed buildings, 
or on occasions rightly or wrongly considered proper, 
like the Fourth of July, and in places where every- 
body agrees to make a noise. If he claims the 
right, he admits the duties limiting it. A man's right 
to enjoy himself admits the right of others to enjoy 
themselves, and confesses the duty of enjoying him- 
self so as not to interfere with their enjoying themselves. 

If a man claims the right to make a noise and fire 
his gun in the wilderness, if nobody else is there, duties 
do not enter into the case, because there is nobody to 
claim them. But if there is anybody else there to 
make the claim, there arises the duty of not disturbing 
him or shooting in his direction. 

Social duties arise, then, from men living together 
in societies, and it pays to limit their rights by living 
together in societies, because they gain vastly wider 



34 The Protection of Rights. [§37 

and better rights — they can do many things together 
that they cannot do separately, and because there 
has been evolved from this habit of living together, a 
happiness in sociability itself. 

When, then, a man calls upon the 

38, Duties baianc- power of society to protect his liberty, 
ingrig s 1 ^n^YiQ confesses two duties to society — that 
of not interfering with the liberty of others, and that 
of helping to protect the liberty of others, just as he 
claims that others shall protect his. If he is called 
upon, he must act as an officer (17) or, as but few men 
are needed as officers, it is his duty to vote for proper 
officers, honestly to pay his share of the expenses, and 
to inform himself so that he can take the right side 
in all social matters. His faithfulness in performing 
the duties government requires of him, measures his 
right to the liberty and the other rights and the con- 
veniences which government provides him. 

We have seen, then, that we get the advantages of 
civilization at the expense of some of the rude liberties 
of the savage, and it is easy to see that the state 
has the same right to restrain these liberties that we 
have seen it has to demand life itself whenever the 
greatest good of the greatest number requires it. Not 
only must the insane and the criminal be restrained, 
but the noisy, the indecent, the filthy and those other- 
wise disagreeable, must be kept within bounds. 

And liberty needs protection not merely 

39. State' right to a8:ainst the corrupt, foolish and dis- 
restrain Liberty. ° ^ . , . ^ . 

agreeable: sometimes m war, insurrection 

and riot, the rights of good and wise men have to be 
infringed upon, even by men as good and wise as Lin- 
coln: for, tho every accused man has a right to a 
trial, when people may be bearing arms against the 
government, there is often no time to wait for trials; 
and moreover, even in a free country at peace, a 
majority is apt to impose on a minority or an indi- 
vidual. Therefore it is well always to be sufficiently 
alive to political rights to guard against the slightest 
infringements. Like "the rift in the lute," infringe- 



§ 4i] Liberty. 35 

ments tend to grow. There is reason for the proverb 
40 " Eternal vigil- "^^^.t "Eternal vigilance is the price of 
ance." liberty" (8). 

But what is to determine when the state shall invade 
the citizen's rights? Who is to judge, when rulers or 
majorities are under temptation? Those are big ques- 
tions, and cover most of the art of government. Most 
of this book is to be taken up with them, and so are 
thousands of other books. 

41. Constitutional ^^ ^^^ Constitution (79) of the United 
defences States, strangely enough, very little was 

BillofRlglits. originally said about liberty. It seems to 

have been the feeling of the framers that the principles 
of political liberty had been so firmly rooted in the 
Anglo-Saxon race that it was not worth while to write 
down many of them. But when the States were called 
upon to ratify the Constitution, they thought differently, 
and asked that certain other bases of political liberty 
which the race had been working out for over a thou- 
sand years, and which all the States then had in 
their own constitutions, should be written down. Con- 
sequently we have them in the first nine articles of 
the amendments, generally called the Bill of Rights. 
That name was first given to an English statute en- 
acted after the revolution of 1688, and ever since has 
been a favorite term for constitutional provisions to 
protect the individual against the government. 

The principal items in our "bill of rights" are (in 
the Constitution itself *) provision against arbitrary 
imprisonment, bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, 
unequal taxation, misuse of public funds, and cor- 
ruption of public officers by giving titles of nobility 
at home or abroad, or by bribery abroad; alsof against 
wholesale charges of treason, and corruption of blood 
for it. The first eight amendments provide for free 
religion, free speech, free assembly, free locomotion, 
publicity of all government proceedings, prompt and 
fair trial by jury, the right to bear arms, and freedom 
from excessive bails and fines. 

* Art. I, Sec. IX. f Art, III. Sec. III. 



36 The Protection of Rights. [§41 

Many of these rights are so well understood by every 
American, and some of them can be so much better 
treated later, that we need consider only part of them 
here. 

A bill of attainder is a mere resolution by a legislative 
body, such as congress or a state legislature or the 
British parliament, to convict of crime, without trial. 
This was a favorite means of tyranny in the days of 
religious persecution. Our Constitution provides that 
every person accused of a crime is entitled to a full 
trial in a court, by jury, and with witnesses that he 
can cross-question and contradict face to face. 

An ex post facto law is a law imposing or increasing 
criminal penalties, or changing the evidence required 
for conviction, for acts that were committed before the 
law was passed. Laws imposing such penalties should 
take effect only upon acts committed after their passage. 

Free speech, which includes a free press, is necessary 
to liberty, because a government whose acts cannot 
be proclaimed and criticised, can easily impose on 
people. One of the first things tyrants attempt, is to 
muzzle the press; and even in our country, offices have 
been given to editors, which of course limits their ten- 
dency to criticise the party in power. In political 
meetings, the majority sometimes refuses reasonable 
attention to the opinions of the minority, or the rowdy 
element dominates the peaceful element, and sometimes 
drives them out ; even minorities have sometimes made 
trouble enough to break up meetings. 

The right of free assembly is necessary to liberty, 
principally because if people could not meet to pro- 
test against a bad government, every government 
would tend to become bad, and it could do as it pleased 
and hold on forever. Tyrants are all the time breaking 
up meetings, and bad men often do so even in free 
countries. 

The right to bear arms would naturally be one of 
the first rights a tyrant would try to suppress. It is 
not opposed, of course, by the laws in many of our 
states against carrying concealed weapons. 



§ 42] Liberty, 37 

Publicity of all government proceedings secures having 
all laws debated and passed in public, so that the 
people may know the reasons for and against, and 
bring their opinion and the influence of the press to 
bear on the law -makers; and may also know which 
men vote for good laws, and which for bad. In courts, 
publicity is perhaps even more necessary than in legis- 
latures. There is no guarantee that a secret trial will 
be fair, or a secret arrest justifiable. All the stories 
of tyrannous times are full of secrecy. 

Promptness of trial needs to be secured, because 
tyrants nearly always delay trials, if they grant them 
at all, and keep their victims lying in prison. True, 
accused people sometimes try to put off their own trials, 
but if they do, with decent courts, it is a strong sign that 
they are guilty. An innocent man can almost always 
prove his innocence promptly if he is free to call witnesses. 

In our country, the great security against illegal 
confinement, is the writ of Habeas Corpus. The words 
mean: *'thou shalt take the person" (or, more strictly, 
"the body"), and they are the first words of a writ or 
writing or order that any judge is bound to issue, on 
proper application, requiring those who have the cus- 
tody of any untried prisoner to "take" his "person" 
promptly into open court to ascertain if he be legally 
held. It may be questioned whether it is worth while 
for us to consider such matters — whether we have in 
America any tyrants to keep in prison any person 
without proving charges against him. But we have 
more tyrants than we always realize. 

Sometimes a majority is the worst pos- 
a^p'uii.^^ '"^" ^'^^ sible tyrant; and in this case, we have 
the "man with a pull." In one of the 
bad wards of New York, for instance, such a man is 
said to have got the police to arrest, and the magis- 
trates to jail, almost anybody he pleased; tho of course 
he could not "please" like Richard III. and Henry VIII. 
to attack prominent people. He is also said to have 
got almost anybody he pleased, let off by the police 
and magistrates. We can defend our liberties against 



38 The Protection of Rights. [§42 

such people only by making government 'positions de- 
pend upon character and intelligence — so that there 
will not be corrupt police and judges. 

43. Freedom of ^^ America it hardly seems worth while 
Opinion. to Speak of freedom of opinion, because 
religious liberty is so well protected, but are we after 
all free from attack on our liberty of opinion? A man's 
neighbors are always exerting a silent pressure to make 
him think and live in their way ; and laws favoring one 
set of private opinions and industries, rather than 
another, are constantly passed without people noticing 
them or realizing their bearings. Such are laws dis- 

44. Laws tlireaten- tributing charities or school funds with 
ing Liberty. reference to religious opinions, laws mak- 
ing it easier to select from one political party than 
from others, the public clerks and laborers with whose 
work political opinion has nothing to do; and laws 
favoring one kind of industry at the expense of others. 
In such laws the danger of tyranny is greater than in open 
attack on Hfe, liberty and property, because open attack 
wouldbe understood andresistedby the whole community. 

And yet there is wide agitation for laws to interfere 
still farther with personal liberty. Some people want 
laws to say how many hours a day a man shall work; 
what wages he shall receive, whether earned or not; 
how much he shall lay up and accumulate; and even 
who shall have charge of factories and stores. The 
objection to government thus managing labor, is that 
Nature manages it vastly better. For government to 
manage it, would take away the test of capacity to 
manage, and substitute the test of capacity to get 
office — so that a man might be born to develop great 
industries and find employment for thousands of his 
less capable fellows, and yet be denied the chance unless 
he were master of the arts of the politician; while the 
ordinary politicians would be attempting the tasks of 
the great captains of industry, and not have the ability 
to carry them out. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. 

Now let US consider the third right claimed in the 
Declaration of Independence — the right to ''The Pur- 
suit of Happiness." 

That right of course involves the rights to Life, to 
Work and to Liberty : the best classifications will over- 
lap. 

But really what the fathers called the 
fo^r* manfrlghts!'*'" ^^S^^ ^^ ^^^ pursuit of happiness, is a gen- 
eral name for innumerable special rights. 
Perhaps we can feel our way to a scientific arrange- 
ment of them, easier than we can lay it down at the 
start, as the rights to political liberty were laid down 
in the Constitution. To make a very simple begin- 
ning: have you a right to pursue happiness into your 
neighbor's watermelon patch? Certainly not. You 
must pursue happiness under some restric- 
all'rightslre!^' ^^ tions, then, like the restrictions on liberty. 
Each man must respect the liberties of 
others: so he must respect the happiness of others. 
Every man has a right to pursue his own happiness so 
far as he does not interfere with another man's pursuit 
of his own happiness. How, then, about competing 
with a man, and perhaps driving him out of business.? 
Competition exists among several people doing the 
same thing. To race fairly, each must not interfere 
with any other's doing the best he can, and govern- 
ment should see that he does not. 

Obviously, the very first thing necessary to do in 

39 



40 The Protection of Rights. [§ 46 

the pursuit of happiness, is to work for a hving, but 
that being, in civihzed countries, a concomitant of the 
right to hfe itself, we so treated it. 

47 Th R" htt There is another right essential to make 

Work involves the Right to Work of any value — ^the 
rights of Property Right to retain or use up the fruits of 
an -xc ange. one's work ; the Right to Work is good 
for nothing unless a man can be protected in the right 
to the products of his work ; and not merely the right to 
use them, but also the right to exchange them as 
one pleases. If a shoemaker could exchange no shoes 
for bread, he would be in a bad way; or if a man 
working for wages could not exchange his money for 
anything else, he would be in even a worse way. 

The general name given to a man's right to produce, 
to keep what he produces, or to dispose of it as he 
pleases, is the Right of Private Property. Yet that 
right, like all others, is limited by the rights of others. 
47 r«; Limited ^^'^ ^ man can exchange his property as 
like ail other ' he plcascs, he has no right to spend his 
"^ *' wages in getting drunk, and if other people 

' — ^his family, for instance, have a right to the money 
he spends in getting drunk, government should inter- 
fere to protect their rights. Even if nobody is depend- 
ent on him for anything, a man is seldom so solitary 
that nobody has any rights in him; and even if one is, 
government has a right to see that he conducts him- 
self so as not to annoy others, or become a charge 
upon them. A man owns a thing, then, and has a 
right to do as he pleases with it, only if he pleases 
not to injure anybody else, or to do anything that 
will harm other people more than it will benefit him (24). 
48. The Ris-hts to ^^^ seldom exchange product alone, 
Work, to Property and Seldom does any one man even start 
fnvofve Right"s^to with the raw material and make any 
Contract product into complete exchangeable shape. 

Generally, things are made by a number of men who 
exchange their labor for money; and in making these 
exchanges — in making all sorts of bargains, other rights 
arise to supplement the rights of Property and Exchange. 



§ 5o] The Pursuit of Happiness. 41 

The first is each man's right that the man he deals with 
shall stand up to his bargain — generally known as rights 
tinder Contract. 

49. and to Repu- Then as each man needs others to deal 
*^*'0"' with him, in order to get them to do so, 
there is another right almost as essential as rights of 
Property and rights under Contract — the right to 
Reputation. A man has a right not to be handicapped 
by any false reports that will interfere with his Right 
to Work and to hold or exchange the fruits of his 
work. 

But if he deserves a bad reputation, of course he 
cannot expect anybody to employ him. Otherwise, 
government should guard a man's reputation, as part 
of his Right to Work, and as part of his general Right 
to the Pursuit of Happiness. Government therefore 
punishes spreading malicious and injurious untruths. 
Moreover, a man can sue for damages to reputation. 
He has as much right to safety in his reputation as 
in his person and property. 

But, similarly with other rights, the right to repu- 
tation rests on the duty of deserving a good reputation. 
If a man sues for damage to reputation, and the truth 
of the charges is proved, he cannot usually recover any 
damages. He sometimes may, however, if he proves 
that there was malice in the charges. 

The groups of rights we have just considered, seem 
to contain all that a man needs in the pursuit of happi- 
ness, tho there are a good many others that it 
would be handy for him to have, such as rights in a 
good bank balance, and two or three good houses, 
with stables full of horses, and a yacht, and a few 

50. State does not ^^^^r trifles. _ But the Signers of the 
furnish means to Declaration evidently did not mean that 
happiness, but only 1 • -uj • j.i .1 • 
rights to work for every man has a right to those thmgs. 

*^^'^' They only meant that every man has a 

right to ''pursue" them, with a fair field and no favor. 
Nor does anybody mean even "them" to constitute 
"happiness". They probably do not, as often as the 
pursuit of them; and certainly not as often as the 



42 The Protection of Rights. [§ 50 

pursuit (not to speak of the possession) of the treasures 
of the mind and heart. 

But we win not attempt anything so difficult as a 
discussion of "happiness", but will treat of its most 
essential conditions so far as government can protect 
them, under the heads indicated. Now as to rights in 
property: people first got property by 
51. Evolution of appropriating it from Nature — taking a 
limb from a tree for a club, or picking 
out a stone well shaped to hammer or chisel with. We 
can hardly tell why that gave the person doing it, 
property rights in the thing: we simply know that it 
is so; or at best, we only know from experience, that 
its being so, is absolutely essential to human welfare. 
A man's right to what he has produced or appropriated 
from Nature, is one of those fundamental principles that 
the experience of mankind has found out, just as it has 
found out that two and two make four, or that rights 
and duties involve each other, or any other bottom fact 
in nature o It must have been realized very early, and 
has been better realized every day, that it is for the 
greatest good of the greatest number to admit such 
rights, and to develop custom and law to protect 
them. The conception of property rights is so ele- 
mentary that if two monkeys are on a tree, and one 
of them picks a piece of fruit, and the other tries to 
take it from him, we feel that the property rights of 
the first are invaded. 

The monkey's picking the fruit, involved some labor, 
and it also involved more or less intelligence: so the 
first conditions of property rights seem to have been the 
bounty of Nature, the desire for something, and in- 
telligence enough and labor enough to carry out the 
desire. 

Now when we follow the evolution of property up 
into man and into modern industry, we 
VomJes—taw ma- find the esscutials of its production to be 
tenai, labor, virtually the same three things as with 
" " ^' the monkey or the savage ; but with the 

names a little changed: we are now apt to call them 



§ 51 «] The Pursuit of Happiness. 43 

Raw Material, Labor and Ability. The tnmgs are 
changed too. Most mechanics use raw material that 
has already been produced by other mechanics — a 
painter's raw material is paint made by somebody else, 
and a carpenter's raw material is wood from a tree 
cut down and sawed up by somebody else, and even a 
blacksmith now seldom makes his own shoes or nails; 
but the paint and boards and hoiseshoes and nails are 
made ■ of things that Nature furnishes directly — from 
real raw material. 



CHAPTER VI 



REAL PROPERTY. 



CO I J A Oris^inal raw material always comes 

52. Land and sea - ,t i i •, r . r "^ 

the source of from the land — its lorests, farms, and 

Raw IVlaterial. mines, and from the sea. But besides 
his own labor, and land (which we will understand 
as including the water and its products), man 
uses the powers of Nature, such as falling water, 
wind, heat, electricity, and the mtiscular strength of 
animals. Yet these are mainly developed from the 
land: to use a waterfall or tide power, a man must 
control the waterside; to use even the wind, he must 
have a place big enough to prevent others from shutting 
off his wind; to use heat and electricity, he must con- 
trol the powers already named, or some product of 
coal-mines and forests; and to use the strength of 
animals (including himself) he must feed them with 
products of the earth, or with animals that were fed 
with products of the earth. 

53. Early Con- Then the land is plainly the first essen- 
ditions, tial of property rights of any kind. Per- 
haps that has something to do with the name Real 
Property, or Real Estate, which is usually applied to it 
and the things affixed to it, such as fences and buildings. 

Among primitive peoples, everybody does as he 
pleases with the land, but nobody pleases to do much: 
so nobody exercises any property rights in it — no- 
body either tills or builds upon it, or even systematic- 
ally gathers any natural produce from it; nor could 
everybody do so, even if they knew how, without 

44 



§ 54J Real Property. 45 

quarreling, and the strongest man driving the others off. 

That is what has really taken place as our part of 
the race has developed — the strongest has got posses- 
sion — exclusiA^e rights over portions of the land have 
become the property of individuals; at first, by force 
of arms, but in recent times, by force of ability, which 
we shall see more of later. But it does not follow 
that all people having land have forcibly taken it from 
others who were weak in arms or ability. The early 
king is often at the head of a people glad to reward 
his leadership against their enemies, by making him lord 
of land which he parcels among his followers; and the 
modern man of ability, while he may control a great 
deal of land himself, generally enables those whom he 
guides to control more than they could without him. 
The savage has no idea of property rights in land. He 
simply wanders where he can find game and fish. For 
that matter, savages have not much idea of property 
rights anyhow; and this is true whether the savages 
are primitive men or the backward members of modern 
society. Barbarians, even when evolved u.p to the 
grade of the Spartans, have generally thought it admir- 
able to be a skilful thief; and even many ill-balanced 
members of civilized society wish to take part of the 
property accumulated by the wise and energetic, and 
give it to the stupid and lazy. 

The first germ of property rights in land, is the con- 
viction that the tribe has a right to the territory it 
roams over, so that no other tribe has a right to enter 
it. When the savage gets civilized enough to culti- 
54. Communistic vate the soil, his idea of property rights 
ownership. jn it, is Still Very rudimentary — barbarians 

simply use their land in common. As civilization ad- 
vances, they portion it out among themselves for a 
short period, and then reapportion it. Even to-day 
backward people, like the Russian serfs and the In- 
dian ryots, hold their land on short leases from the 
community. But the community still owns all the 
land, just as it does among barbarians, and reappor- 
tions it from time to time. 



46 The Protection of Rights. [§ 55 

As people progress farther than the Russians and 
East Indians, the feudal system is generally the next 
55. The Feudal Step, and it is a step toward distinct prop- 
System, erty rights in land. It is generally a 
result of conquest. The system was (and is still, for 
that matter, in some backward places) that the con- 
quering sovereign getting possession of all the land, lets 
his dukes and great nobles have portions on condition 
that when called upon, they shall furnish and lead large 
bodies of soldiers; the great nobles parcel the land 
out again to petty lords and squires, on the condition 
that each shall help make up the overlord's quota of 
the king's army, by furnishing and leading a few 
soldiers; and these petty chiefs parcel out their pieces 
of land again to the actual cultivators, on condition 
that they shall serve as private soldiers. 

While nobody but the ruler owned anything under 
this system, it was an advance on such systems as still 
^^ , , ,„^ lin8:er in Russia and India, because instead 

55 ra;. Why an & i -r. j r • j: 

advance on com- oi a man being sniited irom one piece oi 
mumsm. ^^^^ ^^ another, as he is under the system 

when the community periodically takes it back and 
redivides it, he stayed on it, and his descendants after 
him, and got interested in it, and could afford to fertilize 
and make other improvements far ahead. 

The feudal system, then, was a great advance over 
the ownership by the community which goes with 
primitive civilization, because a man takes care of 
what he has some sort of permanent claim on, and 
neglects what he has not. Farms on short leases are 
always in a tumble-down condition. 
55 r6;. When I^ our own history, the communal sys- 

estabiished. tem changed into the feudal system among 

our forefathers in England, with the Saxon settlement, 
and the division of the conquered lands among each 
chief's followers. In some of the Saxon kingdoms the 
system was evolved faster than in others. It can 
hardly be said to have become universal, however, 
before Cnut the Dane was able to impose a uniform 
rule over all England. 



§55*^ Real Property. 47 

^b(c). Evolution ."When he conquered England, he di- 
0/ hereditary vided what land he did not keep himself 
feudal relations, ^^^ong his great jarls (earls), but only for 
their lifetimes. That was the first transition step toward 
the present system of an ownership forever, subject to 
only such taxes as the government may impose. At 
the earl's death, the king was again nominal owner; but 
as the earl had subdivided among a great number of 
followers, of course it was to the interest of these fol- 
lowers, as well as of the earl's family, that things should 
be left undisturbed; and it was also to the king's 
interest (unless he wanted to put a new favorite in the 
place), provided the successor would render him the 
same support in men or produce that his predecessor 
had rendered. Thus, as it was to the interest of all 
in possession, that no new favorite should come in and 
upset things, in time they generally succeeded, by 
arguments or payments or threats, in inducing the 
king to invest the dead man's son with his father's 
rights. 
R.;/wi n.,n.H!n« ^ct thc oM principlc that the land was 

55 (d). Guardian- ^ J^ 

ship, disposal by the King s and returned to mm as soon 
marriage. ^^ ^-^^ holder died, gavc the king opportu- 

nities to exact heavy payments before letting widow 
and children succeed to the holdings of the husband 
and father. This was the original of our present suc- 
cession tax. It also led to the king having rights of 
guardianship over all minors, and of disposal of widows 
and fatherless maidens in marriage; and he generally 
got pretty big prices for the rich ones, and pretty 
large commissions out of all estates. Now the only 
relic of any such rights is, in England, the Chancery 
Court; and in America, the Surrogate's Court, or Pro- 
bate Court or Orphans' Court — the name varying in 
the different states. All of these courts try to see 
that nobody imposes on widows and minors, and they 
all charge very moderate fees — probably less than 
the cost of keeping up the court, and in some states 
none at all. 

To perfect the system started by Cnut, William the 



48 The Protection of Rights. [§55^ 

55 (e). Domesday Conqueror had an itinerant commission 
^^°'^' called barones regis make careful reports 

of ail the lands in England, with the occupants. These 
reports made the celebrated Domesday Book. He con- 
fiscated land right and left, and put all he could under 
feudal tenure, but it took till the reign of his son Henry 
to finish up the system. 

56. Evolution of ^^^ ^^s"*^ definite step toward an owner- 
private ownership, ship more private still, was taken in the 
twelfth century, when Henry II. (Becket's friend) needed 
soldiers for war in France. His tenants, like our own 

militia, were not obliged to fight away 
CM age. £^q-j^ home : so to get money to hire sol- 
diers to fight abroad, he took from his knights "scu- 
tage'* (shield-money) for rent, in place of military ser- 
vice. 

m(b). Leases for But as militarism declined with barba- 
^"^o*"- rism, and soldiers were needed less often, 

those who controlled land began to let it out for 
other rewards than military service — sometimes even 
for farm service on the land retained by the landlord 
himself, to be rendered between times, when the tenant 
was not cultivating his leased land ; and sometimes for 
part of the produce; and sometimes for money pay- 
ment. A very ill wind blew most of this good with it : 
for the Wars of the Roses left the nobles in great need 
of money, and but little need of military service. 

But tenant-service, and even money- 
comm'utation^of rent. Still left nobody permanent owner of 

labor leases. ^^^ j^^^ ^^^ ^^^ j^-^g. ^^^ ^^^ ^^^t ad- 

vance naturally came about by one big payment for 
life or for all time, in place of the annual payment; 
or by increased annual payments for an agreed series 
of years, on condition that all payment should stop 
at the end of the time. 

Now it may be asked what is the use 

57. Land-tenure In Qf q^j. groins: over all this history ? Could 
America. o o , < -i 

not our ancestors have started on a pri- 
vate-property basis in America without it ? But where 
could they have got the idea? It had to be evolved. 



§ 59] ^^^^ Property. 49 

The full-grown ideas that we take as matters of course 
to-day, have been the slow work — often the bloody 
work, of centuries. 

Land-tenure started in America by the kings of Eng- 
land, France and Spain, giving much of the land to 
individuals and companies, and these divided it up 
among the people of the settled portions. In time, 
most of the land not so divided up came, in one way 
and another, into the possession of the United States 
government. 

The government has kept some still, has thrown some 
open to rights of ownership by settlers on various con- 
ditions, sold some to individuals, reserved some for 
National Parks, given some to the Pacific Railroads 
and a few other roads, so that they could sell it for 
money to build the roads ; and also given some to the 
states in aid of agriculture, the states having in turn 
given it to educational institutions which sell it to 
get money to pay expenses. 

All the systems of use of land which 
simiiar"amm!g'all have been described, exist somewhere in 
peoD^esofthesame the world now — there is plenty of land 
now in the condition that all land was in 
once — desert, or with savages roaming over it — land 
which virtually no one owns. Then there is land in 
every one of the conditions of tenure which we have 
been describing: — among many partly civilized peoples, 
there is common land and feudal land ; among civilized 
rural communities there is much land let out for a 
share of the product; and in both rural communities 
and cities where civilization is at its height, there is 
land whose rents are always paid in money; and last 
of all, there is much land, in both city and country, 
owned by those who occupy it. 

Private property in land, whenever and 
ert'y in^larfdT''' wherever it has become established, has 
great stimulus to been probably the greatest single step in 

" ^' civilization. With it, appeared the first 

chance for everybody with talent and energy to get 
possession of land, and of the social consideration which 



50 The Protection of Rights. [§59 

that possession brings. Outside of war, politics, and 
the church, this was the first offering to energy and 
invention, of the great prizes that have made the differ- 
ence between the forest-community with no letters or 
arts, and the community with steam, electricity, books, 
schools, libraries, galleries, orchestras, and world-wide 
travel — in a word, modern civilization has grown up 
with private property in land. 

This is saying distinctly that civilization has been 
the work of a few prize-winners, or at least prize-seekers 
— the men whom the chance of private property stimu- 
lated — that it has been the work of individual men, 
and not of the race — of a few able men guiding the 
rest. 

Often in barbarous times, the strong 
m?n'Pc1ian'ce?ot man's chancc is at the expense of the weak, 
at the expense of "but seldom in civilized times : a civilized 
government tries to give all men a chance 
to get all they can and keep all they get. That gives 
the able man his chance, no matter how poor his start. 
Rapid new development of corporations (140) in the 
United States has just now outgrown the government's 
capacity to control some of their overreachings. But 
the cases are sporadic, and it may be hoped that govern- 
ment will soon rise to the situation. Ordinarily, under 
a good government, the strong man does not generally 
get his sustenance from the weak one. On the con- 
trary, he gets it from Nature, through energy and in- 
vention. Widening and securing the range of private 
property, leads the strong man to work harder and 
invent more, by making his prizes greater, and increas- 
ing his hold on them. And it does even more for the 
weak man: it not only stimulates him to do his little 
best, but gives his property a protection that the- strong 
man does not need, because he can take care of his 
own. Another advantage to the weak man under a 
constitution that recognizes and secures private prop- 
erty, is that the strong man will be stimulated to reclaim 
and cultivate so much more land, and to make so many 
more things, that he will find much more profitable work 



§ 6i] Real Property. 51 

for the weak man to do, and provide much more for 
the weak man's good. That is proved by the wonder- 
ful increase in rich men's gifts for the general benefit. 

0. D ^' f ' It would be expected, then, as is found 

61. Proportion of pri- ^ . ^ ,1 , • -i- .• 1 

vate owners ircreases to be true, that as Civilization advances, 

with civilizat.on. ^-j^g proportion of absolute private owners 

of land increases : in fact there is no more marked evi- 
dence of the progress of civilization than that relative 
increase; and there is no better field for philanthropy 
or strengthening the state, than increasing the number 
of people who own at least their homes. Napoleon 
made it the law in France that the land of a person 
dying should be divided among all his children. This 
has produced an immense number of private owners, 
and they are among the richest and best citizens of 
their class in the world.* Yet this dividing could be 

* For over forty years there has lingered in my memory a 
quotation from Michelet, in Mill's Political Economj^, regarding 
the effect of private property in land, and, as poetry is stronger 
than philosophy, it has probably done more to make me realize 
the merits of the question than all the discussions I have read 
since. It seems worth translating here. 

" If we want to get at the inmost thought, the passion, of 
the French peasant, it is very easy to do. Let us take a walk 
some Sunday in the country, and follow him up. See him walk- 
ing down there before you. It is two o'clock; his wife is at 
vespers; he is gotten up in his Sunday best; and, I am ready 
to vouch, is going to see his mistress. 

"What mistress? His land. 

"I don't say that he will go directly. No, he is free to-day, 
he can go or not as he pleases. Doesn't he go there often 
enough every day of the week? Moreover, he turns away, he 
goes somewhere else, he has business somewhere else. But he 
will go there all the same. 

"It is true that he goes very near: but that just happened 
so. He looks at it, but apparently he will not go in; what 
has he to do there? But he will go in, all the same. 

" Nevertheless, it is probable that he will not do any work; 
he is gotten up for Sunday; he has on a white blouse and a 
white shirt — yet all that does not stop him from pulling out 
an occasional weed, or throwing out that stone. Then there is 
that stump which annoys him, but he has not his pick with 
him: so the stump can wait till to-morrow. 

" Then he crosses his arms and stands still, looks around 
earnestly, carefully. He looks long, very long, and seems to 



52 The Protection of Rights. [§ 6i 

carried to a point where the heir's farm would not be 
big enough to support him or pay for using expensive 
machinery; but then he can sell out and go to manu- 
facturing or shopkeeping. The difficulty would cure 
itself. 

Our own country shares with France the leadership 
of the world in wide dissemination of the ownership 
of land, and the fact is of very great importance to us: 
g2 I J the large numbers of people owning their 

the' best guardians own farms and their own homes in America, 
of government, probably do more in the desperate fight to 
keep the government prudent and patriotic, than all 
other influences put together. Any man owning land 
'pnust pay taxes — he cannot hide his land from the tax- 
gatherer: therefore he must have a stake in honest and 
economical government. We shall see much more of 
this very important consideration. 

The French peasants make better in- 
th^riffy cifens?* comes than other small farmers, who 
lease their land, just as our farmers who 
own their land, generally make better incomes than 
those who lease it : a man cares for that which belongs 
to him in a way that he cares for nothing else, and 
enjoys caring for it to a degree that keeps him cheerful 
and capable; the more cheerful and energetic he is, 
the more he produces; and the more that a man pro- 
duces, the better not only for him, but for the whole 
community, because the cheaper it can be sold to those 
who do .not produce it. 

64. Exaggerated Some people have pushed reasoning 

claims from the irom these advantages, to at least two 

foregoing ad- o ' 

vantages. very absurd extremes. 

forget himself. At last, if he thinks anybody is looking, if he 
sees anybody coming, he moves off with reluctant steps. Yet 
at thirty paces, he stops, turns again, and casts over his land 
a last look, a look deep and somber, but to one who knows 
how to see, the man is thrilled, his look is from the heart, 
charged with devotion." — Le Peuple, par J. Michelet, V 
partie, ch, I. 



§ 64 <^] Real Property. 53 

As the first, they say that as every person born has 
a right to exist on the earth, and therefore a right to 
a place of existence — to a home: every person is en- 
titled to own a piece of land. 

It is hard to see how that right can be good against 
anybody but his parents. Nobody else ordered him 
here, and certainly a man with a little or no land, can- 
not have a right to bring into the world as many children 
as ne pleases, and require other people to give them 
a part of their land. The only condi- 
toa^homey^^^ "t^o^ upon which a man can claim a right 
to land or to anything else, is, of course, 
by performing the duties which correspond to the 
right (23, 25), either by appropriating what nobody 
else had a right to (51), or exchanging for what he 
wants, something he had appropriated or produced. 

And even suppose it possible to give every man a piece 
of land, how long would most of them keep it? Appar- 
ently until they could sell it or give it away — one 
cannot always do either. It is now very hard to 
keep people on the land, they are flocking more and 
more to the cities, even if they have to live in tene- 
ment-houses. In 1905 one third of the half million 
Italian immigrants were in the slums of New York, 
while the agricultural industries of the South, in a 
climate and labor congenial to the immigrants, were 
crying for them in vain. 

Yet the Salvation Army's farm colonies, for instance, 
are excellent as far as they go. But so far, they have 
got only a trifling portion of the three million people 
they say they ought to have. With more money they 
would get more, but not enough to reverse the rule. 

Yet in spite of all the facts, there is a great outcry 
against holders of idle land, for keeping the starving 
millions away from it; but there is always a great 
outcry against holders of anything by those who do 
not hold anything, and all the time this idle land is 
paying taxes which would not be paid if government 
owned it. 

The second reason given for the claim that every 



54 The Protection of Rights. [§ 64 h 

man has the right to own a piece of land, is that every 
man has a right to a hving, and that as 
tod^iiuingy^'^^ everything that sustains hfe comes, in the 
first instance, from the land, every man 
has a right to enough of the land to make his living out 
of. There are two answers: no healthy man has a 
right to a living unless he earns it, or gets it honestly 
from somebody who did earn it; and there are endless 
ways of earning it without owning land . as already 
stated, many people cannot be forced to make their 
living out of the land. Moreover, not every prosperous 
man gets his living directly out of the land, even many 
very rich people do not own any land; and in fact, not 
one American in ten owns any land whatever. So it 
does not seem necessary that, to have a home and 
make a living, a man must own land. 

As a fact, any energetic poor man, under ordinary 
circumstances, can get a farm to work if he wants it. 
The older parts of the country, New England and the 
South, abound in empty farms begging for tenants to 
work them on shares; and the nev/ Western wild land 
needs them as much; there is plenty of open land and 
sunlight and fresh air within easy reach of the people 
who are packed in the city tenement-houses, but they 
will not go to it. 

But to work land, men require capital — money, 
horses and farm machinery, and it may be urged that 
it is because of lack of them that they will not go to 
the land. But the fact is that the men who have farms 
and capital to work them, are suffering because they 
cannot hire labor ; and all the while people are working 
in other pursuits, at worse wages, and penned up in 
city tenements. In answer to this, it is urged that 
as the laborer going to work on another m_an's land, 
would not make him its ov/ner, the laborer's not going 
for hire does not prove that he would not go if the 
land were his own. But those who own land are 
leaving it more and more. If anybody else wants any, 
he can prove his right to it, as he can to anything else, 
by earning it. 



§ 66] Real Property. 55 

65. Land valueless ^^ ^^^ ^^ observed thoss who object to 

to all but able private ownership of land, nave not gen- 
'"®"' erally shown any particular inclination to 

work the land or improve it, or any ability to do it if 
they try. The objection is most generally made by 
men who have not had much success in any other pur- 
suit, and that is a poor show for success in farming: it 
certainly requires as much ability as any other ordinary 
pursuit. People are constantly taking up land who 
cannot support themselves on it, and who end by work- 
ing for the people with the ability to show them how. 
On the whole, then, it does not seem to make much 
difference whether everyone is entitled to a portion of 
the earth or not, as long as those who are able to do 
anything with it. are generally able to get it ; and those 
who are not able to get it, would not generally be able 
to do anything with it if they had it. 

gg p . So much for the exaggerations of the 

reversion to gov- advantages of private ownership. Now 
ernment ownership, ^g ^ f^^^^ ^j^^g^ g^-^.^ ^f ^-^^^^ exaggera- 
tions are generally about as consistent as people given 
to exaggeration usually are. Those who in one breath 
thus magnify the benefits of private ownership of land, 
in the next breath generally propose to do away with 
private ownership altogether — they generally propose 
that government shall take all the land, and that 
everybody who uses any, shall pay rent to govern- 
ment, instead of, as now, owning the land without 
rent, or paying rent to a private party. And all that, 
in face of the plain fact that if government did take 
all the land and pay for it and rent it to the people, 
it could make no difference to people now paying rent, 
unless they should pay less rent, and then it would 
be simply a scheme for government making a present 
of the difference, to anybody who wanted land, at the 
expense of those who did not. 

This speculation was once proposed by John Stuart 
Mill to the English government. If they had gone 
into it, instead of people in general being gainers, as 



56 The Protection of Rights. [§66 

expected, the landlords would have been the gainers 
at the expense of the rest of the community: at a fair 
price, the lands of England would have cost the govern- 
ment more then than they were worth fifty years later: 
so far have our wheat and cattle, and those of Australia, 
taken the place of England's productions. 

But government's taking all the land by robbery, as 
is quite widely proposed by those who have none to 
lose, and renting it to the people, would help the tax- 
payers more than it would the poor: for the state 
would receive all that rent -money, and need less for 
taxes. But the landlords pay most of the taxes now: 
in New York and Massachusetts, for in- 
supporHhegovern- Stance, four fifths of those collected di- 

ment under either rectly. And most of the other fifth— the 
system. -^ 

taxes on personal property, are un- 
doubtedly also paid by the persons owning the land. 

Then after all, the scheme would be as broad as 
long: for government ownership would not put the 
land in new hands. If anybody wants land and has 
the money to pay for it, he gets it now. What differ- 
ence would it make if he got it from government? 

Last of all, the state is not apt to make a good land- 
lord: for it already has more to do than it does well 
or honestly. 

68. Some advocate So far as we have gone, then, there does 

robbery, which ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ' 

would disappoint not Seem to be any rhyme or reason m 
^^'^' the scheme of government ownership: so 

there is probably some "true inwardness", that we 
have not yet attained to. That inwardness is that 
all these foolish notions that we have been considering, 
are given as reasons why government should take all 
the land without paying for it — take it either directly 
or by taxing all the value out of it, and rent it to 
those wanting it, and devote the proceeds, above the 
present amount of taxation, to public works and the 
benefit of the poor. That certainly would at least be 
helping the poor at the expense of the rich; but not 
as exclusively as its advocates intend: for many of 



§ 7o] . Real Property. 57 

• 
the rich have Httle or no land — many owners of large 
tracts are land-poor with their holdings mortgaged for 
more than they are worth, and many of the poor, if 
they were to receive land as a gift, would not keep it. 
Yet certainly the scheme would help some of the 
poor at the expense of some of the* rich, but it would 
help more of the rich at the expense of all of the poor: 
for any attempt to carry out the scheme would make, 
for a time, the greatest financial upset ever seen, and 
there never yet was a financial upset in which the 
rich did not generally hold on to what they had, and 
buy cheaply what the poor had to part with at forced sale. 
Government ownership of land, then, is 
to^heip th°e"[joor!s' One of half a dozen schemes to help the 
to help them help poor without their helping themselves, 

th6rnsclV6Si x o ^ 

which are all equally unsound, and which 
we will see more of as we go on. This world was 
plainly made for the people who help themselves, and 
there has been no way discovered for anybody else to 
get much good out of it. Yet helping oneself is not 
the only way to get good: more still can be had from 
helping one's neighbor, but a man cannot do that be- 
fore he takes reasonable care of himself. 

We will more fully consider the questions of the 
care of the poor, when we come to treat of govern- 
ment's promotion of convenience. For the present 
we are busy with its protection of rights. Now out- 
side of alleged "public policy", which embraces the 
points we have considered already, there is twofold 
moral justification alleged for protecting the rights of 
the community by robbing present holders of their 
land — first, that the land originally belonged to every- 
body, and was wrongfully seized by those from whom 
its present owners got it, and therefore should go back 
to everybody; second, the famous "unearned incre- 
ment" argument. 
^„ Tu 1 As to the spoliation argument, there 

70. The moral argu- . .^ r • . . • 1 

ments— original IS no evidence for it, except m such cases 
general ownership. ^^ ^j^^^ Europeans dealt with Americans 



58 The Protection of Rights. [§ 70 

• 
and Africans. If most of the land in Europe and 
Asia was stolen by the original grantors of its present 
owners, it was "stolen from a thief": for it had been 
conquered and reconquered over and over again. The 
rights of the present owners are vastly clearer than 
any other rights that could be presented: no descend- 
ants of previous proprietors who might want to stand 
in the shoes of the present ones, could prove any rights 
at all: if they could, courts are generally open to them. 

But where civilized people have robbed barbarians — 
the case of our ancestors in America, if you please — 
that case might be a reason why the present owners 
(including the heirs of Henry George, if he owned any 
land) should give the land back to any heirs of the 
savages they can find; but it cannot possibly be a rea- 
son why the ov/ners who are not heirs or followers of 
Henry George, should give it to those who are. The 
barbarians had not much idea of any such rights them- 
selves: those rights take shape only as a civilized com- 
munity grows up on the land. But some people we 
call barbarous do use their land, and some land has 
been taken from barbarians of that kind. Yet there 
are very few such cases, and in most of them it is too 
late to find anybody representing the barbarian owner; 
and even if it were not, it is too late to do justice to 
the former interests without doing more injustice to 
interests now vested. Many a piece of land which was 
never worth a dollar to the barbarian, is worth millions 
to present innocent holders. 

As a matter of abstract justice, you might give the 
barbarian the dollar if you could find him, but that is 
not what Henry George's followers are after. Yet of 
course in theory, where civilized people have got posses- 
sion by force, and not, as Penn did, by bargain, justice 
should be done if it were possible. Some deny that 
Penn's buying a great state for a few beads was a fair 
bargain. But that was more than it was worth to the 
savages. The fact that civilized men have made it 
worth more, is not one that the savages are entitled 
to any benefit from. 



§ 7 2] Real Property. 59 

In a similar case, those who sold the site of the city of 
Chicago little more than a lifetime ago, for a mere song, 
are not entitled to any benefit from what later owners 
have done with it : for what the latter men have made, 
is their own. 

Even if the site had been obtained by 
remedy Tnjustice fraud, it ought not to be given back to 
sometimes only the Original Owner if he can be found : for 

increases iti ^ 9, . 

sucii a doctrine would stop all enterprise — 
nobody could build or cultivate with guarantee that 
some far-back landowner or his heirs would not come 
, along and claim the land and, of course, all on it. 

Yet nobody can get a good title to land or anything 
else through fraud, nor can anybody convey any better 
title than he has himself; and a title obtained through 
fraud fifty or a hundred years ago, and passed from 
hand to hand since, cannot be anything but a fraudulent 
title. 

But on the other hand, receiving an 
duties^ofownefship ol<i title, good or bad, is not the only way 
Swn^etshi^.^^' °^ to get a good title. Using the land, or 

doing other duties incident to ownership, 
will answer the purpose. The law provides that any- 
body who performs duties of ownership for a reasonable 
time (varying in different states — usually twenty years) 
during which nobody else has performed any, has a 
perpetual right to the land; and has that right, even if 
the land clearly belonged to somebody else at the 
beginning of the twenty years. 

Such a law is justified by at least three good reasons : 
first, no one has a right to neglect his property so far as 
neither to use it himself, nor assert ownership while 
another is using it; second, if an owner will not use 
land, it is an advantage to the community to have 
somebody else use it; third, if a man honestly comes 
into a title that was originally fraudulent, and the 
rightful owner does not assert his claim within a reason- 
able time, the honest occupier should not be disturbed 
in the enjoyment of whatever improvements he may 
have made for his own benefit and that of the community. 



6o The Protection of Rights. [§73 

73. Rights in im- Attempts have been made to settle the 
nrovements. matter by letting a claimant after twenty 
years of another's adverse occupancy, pay for the im- 
provements. But that was found to discourage improve- 
ment, because the motive to improve is not merely to 
get back cost, but to develop a profit. 

There were two justifications cited for the proposed 
robbery of present owners of land. The "original rob- 
bery" one being disposed of, we come now to the "un- 
earned increment" one. Wherever population grows, 

74. The unearned land increases in value. If a man owns 
Increment. a lot worth a thousand dollars in a village 
of, say, a thousand people, if that village grows to con- 
tain two thousand, the value of the land is apt to be 
increased by the coming of the second thousand, and it 
is claimed that the community is entitled to the increased 
value, because the increment of value is "unearned" by 
the ov/ner of the lot. 

This good reasoning does not cover the case. The 
second thousand people do not do anything to a former 
resident's lot, and certainly the first thousand did not: 
so how can either have any claim on its increased value ? 
The owner is the only person who does anything to it, 
even if he only pays the taxes on it. If he starts on it 
an industry which increases the population, he does 
something to increase the value of every piece of property 
in town, and he, if anybody, is entitled to the "unearned 
increment ". But the unearned-increment advocates 
claim that it should be given to those who have not 
built anything — to the poor. As a matter of fact, 
-,A r ^ M ^ u increase of population must bring all the 

74 (a). Not char- ^ . ^ ^ .^^i i • r 

acteri Stic of land unearned increment to the business oi a 
^^°"^' newspaper or a store or a blacksmith shop, 

that it does to land, and more : for all the increment that 
land can get, it must get from increased rent paid by 
business of some sort, even if that business be farming. 
(Scientifically speaking, all benefits coming from the 
use of land are "rent", even if the owner gets them.) 
Every man who does his work well — every capable 



§ 74 ^] Real Property. 6i 

and honest man who does something to improve the 
lives of people, raises the value of land near him; but 
that gives him no right to any but an incidental share 
in the benefit he confers on his neighbors — except that 
it does make it fair that his neighbors should recipro- 
cate by being capable and honest too, and so conferring 
benefits on him. 

The community has no more right, then, to partly 
take possession of land by taxing away the unearned 
increment, than by doing the same to the unearned 
increment of the blacksmith's business or the news- 
paperman's or the butcher's or baker's or candlestick- 
maker's. 

Under the present system, people invest in unoccu- 
pied lands on the chances of the unearned increment, 
and pay taxes and lie out of interest. If government 
took possession, it would have all the unimproved land 
on its hands, with nobody to pay taxes on it. Of all 
the wild follies written in advocacy of government 
ownership, the wildest is the assumption pervading 
most of that writing, that if government owned the 
land which nobody cares to use now, such land would 
all come into use, and all the poor be made rich by it. 

And after all the fuss, it is very uncertain how much 
unearned increment there is to tax. That is largely a 
question of time and place. Henry George claimed 
that paying the rent on unearned increment, directly 
and indirectly, is the cause of virtually all poverty; and 
yet Superintendent Harris, in the Educational Review 
for May, 1905, says: "Careful investigation has shown 
that [rent of] land in the United States is a small burden : 
only one eighteenth of the . . . earnings of the people 
in 1880 — two and one-fifth cents per day as against 
average production of more than forty cents a day for 
each inhabitant." I know of no later calculation. Tho 
one could be made without much difficulty, it would 
be superfluous. Professor Mayo-Smith says: ''From 
the experience of England ... it may well be ques- 
tioned whether the present ground-rents of agricultural 
land represent more than a fair return for improvements 



62 The Protection of Rights. [§ 74 <^ 

made. So too, in regard to the unearned increment, it 
appears that there are numerous losses as well as gains, 
so that it is doubtful whether, on the average, and in 
the long run, land property is any more advantageous in 
form than any other kind of property." 

The whole consideration seem.s to show that the 
idea of everybody being entitled to a piece of land, 
or of government appropriating it for the general good, 
. is simply a proposition to return to the 

abolish privafr ° half -civilized communal system — to go 
ownership are back to where India and Russia are, and 

retrogressive, . n -. • i ^ ' - 

Wipe out all the stimums to careful and 
energetic and forethoughtful management, that rests in 
private ownership. 

Aside from the impossibility that a man should do 
much for a farm that he holds for a short time, the 
communal landholding of backward nations helps keep 
them backward, because habit and the chance to get 
land for nothing incline such people to keep on working 
the land: therefore fewer people are led to manufac- 
turing, commerce, and the other pursuits which per- 
haps do even more than the primitive and sequestered 
one of farming, to advance civilization. 

At first it seems a paradox that while in America 
it is hard to get people to take up the abandoned farms, 
in Russia it is hard to get people awa}" from the com- 
munal land. The explanation is that the Russian and 
his ancestors have been so long under the deadening 
influence of communal land that he cannot rise above 
it; but the American has always been planning ahead 
for his own land, so the habit of thinking a long way 
ahead and outside of his daily round has been formed 
in him by the private ownership of land. 

76. Private nroDerty '^^^ management of land is not sim.ply 
inland of universal the Owner's lookout, or that of the holder 
importance. ^^^ ^^^ ^-^^ being. If he does not manage 

well, he is not the only one to suffer. Everybody de- 
pends on the land, whether he owns any or not, for his 



§ 77] Real Property. 63 

food and clothing and everything he uses, except what 
comes from the sea. So it is to everybody's interest that 
the land should be managed in the most careful and pro- 
ductive wa}^^; and the first essential to careful and pro- 
ductive management of land or anything else, is that 
a man should be sure of reaping where he sows — of 
getting the results of what he plans — that he should 
own the thing he works upon. While very few people 
own the things they work upon — even the farms, not 
to speak of the factories and shops, it is not unreason- 
able to look forward to the time when most men will. 
It is true that while hundreds of men work on a single 
railroad or in a single factory, or even on a single 
farm, they cannot each own it, but things are rapidly 
shaping themselves so that each can own a share in it, 
if he is economical enough and wise enough to do 
any owning at all (126). 

^7 p. ... , . It ought to be plain by this time that 
77. Rights m land . . ^ ^ ^ ^ , ■' ^ 

limited iil<e all it IS as mucn the state s duty to protect 
'"'^ ^^' rights to land, as rights to life or liberty. 

But we saw that it sometimes becomes the state's 
duty to limit the citizen's rights to life or liberty, and 
we could expect to find the same true in regard to his 
rights to land. 

Whenever the greatest good of the greatest number 
requires it, the state should take the citizen's land, 
and despite the theories we have been considering, 
experience seems to prove that a case where the state 
should take it without paying for it is not apt to arise. 
At least the fathers of our government were so well 
satisfied that it never can (in this being less wise than 
the Henry Georgians think themselves), that as early 
as 1 79 1, it was provided in the Constitution that land 
taken by the National Government for public uses 
must always be paid for.* 

The tAvo principal sets of circumstances under which 
land is so taken, are when the right to take it at a 

* Amendment V. 



64 The Protection of Rights. .[§ 78 

78.. Rights of fs-ir .valuation is given to citizens working 
Eminent Domain, for the public accommodation — to rail- 
road companies and water companies, for instance; 
and when the state itself obliges holders to sell their 
land for the use of legislatures, courts, custom.-houses, 
post-offices, police-stations, forts, barracks, dockyards, 
roads, railroads (where the state builds them), and 
many other purposes. 

The greatest good of the greatest number requires 
that a railroad should take a direct way, instead of being 
obliged to zigzag only where people are willing to let it 
go; and so the state may rightly enable a railroad to 
cut a man's farm in two, or perhaps tear down his very 
home; but it must compensate him. The government 
usually decides through Some form of legislation, when 
the greatest good of the greatest number requires a 
proposed railroad; and if the justice of the law is dis- 
puted, it must also be passed upon by the courts. Be- 
sides deciding that the road would be for the greatest 
good of the greatest number, the state must also give 
the authority to lay out the road, and compel people to 
sell the right of way at reasonable prices. Where the 
parties cannot agree on values, the courts appoint com- 
missioners to fix them. 

The right of the state to take land or authorize citizens 
to take it, is called the right of Eminent Domain. 

One other condition places the citizen's rights in land 
at the disposal of the government: land can be taxed 
of course, like everything else, and sold if the taxes 
are not paid. 



CHAPTER VII. 

LAW OF REAL PROPERTY. 

Now we have some notion of the rights of property, 
especially as concerns the land. Next let us consider 
the rules under which rights are protected and trans- 
ferred. Those rules are called the Law. 
79. The Law in No man ever had a thorough knowledge 

S®"^""^'" of the law. It is the most colossal product 

of the human mind. Yet many men have thoroughly 
known its outlines and some of its parts. To have a 
good working knowledge, one must know some dozens 
of big volumes well, and also know how to consult 
some thousands. It need hardly be said that we can 
get but very slight notions of it here, but those slight 
ones may be well worth while. 

Every citizen should have some appreciation of where 
this immense mass of wisdom and justice comes from, 
and an adequate appreciation of it stirs the admiration, 
the reverence and even the affection of every liberal 
mind. The law has been evolved slowly from many 
sources. The four principal ones have been, first, Con- 
stitutions — agreements made by peoples as to what sort 
of executives, legislators and judges they shall have, 
and what powers those functionaries shall have ; second, 
Statutes, rules made by legislative bodies — from primi- 
tive tribal assemblies down to modern parliaments, con- 
gresses, and state legislatures (perhaps in these we should 
even include the law-making bodies of local govern- 
ments) ; third, the Administrative Law — the decisions 
and practices of the executive or administration in the 

65 



66 The Protection of Rights. [§79 

course of its business — such as the rules of the treasury, 
the custom-house, the post-office and the other depart- 
ments : many of these have been confirmed by courts or 
legislatures or custom, and so become permanent parts 
of the national policy; and fourth, the Common Law — 
the decisions made by judges (the judges in primitive 
times having generally been priests). These decisions 
have been handed down, first by tradition, and in 
modern times by a very thorough system of printed 
reports, with elaborate summaries (called digests) and 
indexes. These volumes of reports now contain the 
main bulk of the law. They are consulted in all im- 
portant trials, and arguments and decisions are based 
on the points of the case in hand which have been 
decided in previous similar cases. Moreover, the grow- 
ing wisdom of the ages has been shaped into a number 
of maxims that have great authority in the law, some 
of which we shall see hereafter (85, 182, 186, 191, 205, 
214, 214/, 385). Many of them are in Latin, dating 
back to the time when our legal proceedings were gen- 
erally conducted in Latin — some of them even back 
to Rome. From judges' decisions and maxims, and 
occasionally from statutes, learned writers have made 
many compendiums showing which way the weight of 
opinion has gone in various classes of cases. These 
constitute what are called the "text -books", on such 
subjects, for example, as Real Property, Contracts, 
Evidence, Corporations, and hosts of others. 

As Constitutions prescribe what the officers shall be, 
and their powers, all other bodies of law are made by 
those whom the people elect to make them. All other 
powers are reserved to the people. If officers want 
more powers than the constitution gives them, the 
constitution must be amended or a new one made. 
Constitutions, with their amendments, are voted on by 
the people. Countries like Russia or Turkey, without 
constitutions, are governed by those who seize the 
power or inherit it. 

In England, Parliament has power to change the 
constitution, but the people have power at any time 



§ 8o] Law of Real Property. 67 

to change parliament, not needing to wait for the regu- 
lar time, as we do. 

As the administration is under the control of the 
constitution, and to some extent under the control of 
the legislature and even of the courts, administrative 
law is constantly merging into constitutional law, 
statute law and the common law. 

While the president, or any one of his cabinet, or any 
officer acting under any of them, must to some extent 
make his own decisions and shape his own policy, he 
must do it within the lines laid down by the constitu- 
tion and the laws; and anybody thinking himself 
aggrieved by any public officer, generally has some 
sort of right of appeal to the courts. Similarly, judges 
under the common law must decide in accordance with 
the statutes and the constitution; and framers of 
statute law, while they can override common law (sub- 
ject to the danger of having its weight finally lead to 
neglect or repeal of the statute), cannot override con- 
stitutional law: if they do, the courts will declare the 
statute null. 

The order, then, of the four bodies of law, in respect 
of their control, each but the last controlling what is 
under it, is Constitutional Law, Statute Law, Common 
Law, and Administrative Law. Constitutions control 
legislatures , judiciaries and executives ; legislatures con- 
trol judiciaries and executives; judiciaries control ex- 
ecutives. When executives attempt to control any of 
the other powers, as they are often, especially lately, 
accused of doing, they incur disapprobation, and risk 
impeachment and deposition. Similarly with judges 
(unless they have constitutions at their backs) when 
they place themselves in opposition to legislatures, or, 
of course, when they attempt undue control of execu- 
tives. 

80. Real Estate ^^ ^^^^ begin our consideration of the 

and Personal law of property in land, with a few ele- 

Property. mentary general notions. As you will re- 

member, the name given to property rights in land and 



68 The Protection of Rights. [§ 80 

the things fixed to it, is Real Property, or Real Estate, 
or, for short, Realty. Movable property is called Per- 
sonal Property. One reason for calling land and the 
things fixed to it, Real Property, was probably because 
it is the source of all other property, and it looks as 
if another reason was because land is less apt than other 
property to slip out of sight. 

But the rights in real property are not actually 
more "real " than the rights in personal property. The 
name deceives most people. Real estate usually fluctu- 
ates more in value than personal property, and is 
probably oftener hard to find a buyer for. 
81. Laws protecting First, then, as to protecting the enjoy- 
ownership. ment of property rights in real estate: 

anybody may properly enter one's house or grounds 
for any reasonable purpose, for instance, to make a 
81 (a). Damages visit or a short cut on foot or with a team, 
for trespass. uulcss the owucr objccts. But if he does 

object, unless the person were doing some real harm, 
the juries would probably give less damages than a 
lawyer would cost. 

81 (b). Right of If One has posted up a notice forbidding 

ejectment. persons to enter, greater damages would 

probably be given. If the owner orders a person off, 
and he refuses to go, the owner can use force, but 
not enough to do serious injury. If he cannot get 
rid of a trespasser without doing serious injury, he 
may have to get an order from a court prohibiting him 
from staying or coming; and if he violates that, he 
will be shut up for contempt of court. An officer of 
the law can use all the force necessary to take his man, 
even if it kills him; but he must be careful not to use 
more than necessary. If an officer cannot get a tres- 
passer off, he has a right to call upon everybody to help 
him. If in the course of the argument, the stubborn 
gentleman seems likely to injure somebody else, 
everybody has the right of self-defence, up to any 
point. 

If a man squats on land and builds a shanty there, 
the owner can remove him and his shanty, if it is 



§ 82 6] Law of Real Property. 69 

possible to do so without violence. If it is not, the 
owner must appeal to a court to order him off. 

If during an owner's absence, somebody has built 
upon and improved land, claiming it as his — even under 
a mistake, the owner may go to court for an order of 
ejectment, which will be granted unless the occupant 
shows a good case. 

82. Laws affecting Now as to transferring property rights 
transfers. {-^ land. Rights in personal property are 

generally recognized by possession — the property usu- 
ally (we will deal with some exceptions later) being 
near the person of its owner, and transferred by delivery. 

But one cannot deliver a piece of land, and it can- 
not always be near enough the person of the ov\^ner 
to be recognized as his, unless it happens to be his 
home estate or the location of his business. Hence in 
old times, ownership in real estate was transferred and 
recognized by the man who made the grant, and his 
grantee, walking around the property together, gener- 
ally with witnesses, and then the grantor delivering to 
the grantee a token of possession, such as a piece of the 
soil or a twig from one of the trees. 

In your reading, you may often come across a tech- 
nical phrase for this ceremony, which was called "livery 
82 (a). Lioery of of scisin." Li very is plainly connected 
seisin. with delivery, and seisin is connected with 

the fact that in early times (and even now in law phrase) 
the owner was said to be "seised" of the property — a 
suggestion that in rude times "seisin" was not always 
connected with "livery." But livery of seisin is not 
the usual method, even in our gentler age, tho it does 
survive in some remote and primitive regions, even 
where the present method has grown up beside it. 

The present method is by the transfer 

82 (b). statute of r •.. <'j jm r i: • i 

Frauds requiring of a Written deed , 01 Whlch a copy IS 

of'frans7lrr^^ usually registered at the chief town of the 
county. Certain statutes to guard against 
frauds (the principal one of which, generally known as 
the "Statute of Frauds", was passed in the reign of 
Charles II.) provide that contracts relating to real estate, 



70 The Protection of Rights. [§ 82 6 

and certain other things which we will consider later 
(198), must be in writing, tho now in many states, 
statute permits a verbal lease for a year, and sometimes 
longer. Usually, now, when two parties have agreed on 
a sale of real estate, they at once put their agreement in 
writing — generally by filling out and signing a printed 
form that the lawyers' experience has led the stationers 
to prepare, and the purchaser generally pays something 
on account, which will be forfeited if he does not carry 
out the contract. 

You may wonder what we have to do with a law 
passed in England under Charles IL We were gener- 
ally governed by the English laws until the Revolution ; 
and when we dissolved our connection with Great 
Britain, each state enacted that the previous laws of 
England should prevail within its borders, when not 
in conflict with laws made by its own authorities. All 
later states have so enacted, but Louisiana, which is 
still under much of the law she received from France. 

To return: part -payment is often supposed necessary 
to make a written contract valid, but it is not: for, 
as we saw, under the Statute of Frauds writing alone 
makes the contract valid, if it is valid in other respects 
which we will consider later. 

82 re;. Contracts The written contract of sale usually 
of Sale. recites that in consideration * of blank 

dollars paid to A by B, A agrees to sell, and B agrees to 
buy, a piece of land described; that the price shall be 
blank dollars, so much payable on the signing of this 
contract, so much on the delivery of the deed at some 
specified time and place, and (if there are any deferred 
payments) so much at other times specified, the deferred 
payments to be secured by a mortgage (83). 

A deed is any instrument sealed as well 

^ ' ^^ ^' as signed. This does not mean sealed up: 
in old times before men generally — especially the great 
fighting characters who owned most of the property, 

* There may be other considerations, and it might be worth 
the reader's while to anticipate the order of statement by reading 
regarding them in Section 179 if. 



§ 82 /] Law of Real Property. 71 

knew how to write their names, it was the custom to 
authenticate written instruments by putting on a 
seal after words declaring that the instrument was 
the parties' free act and deed; and even after it became 
general to sign the name, on specially formal instru- 
ments it remained customary to put the seal also, and the 
name "deed" was retained for all instruments under 
seal, tho in popular use it generally means a conveyance 
of land. 

^2 (e). Seal and Generally the seal need not be an im- 
its effect. pression of some device peculiar to the 

grantor, and on some impressible substance: in most 
of the states, any spot of some adhesive substance will 
do; and in many of the states a mere scrawl of the 
pen, w4th the word "seal" written in it, is enough; 
or perhaps even without that word, if the position and 
nature of the scrawl make its purpose plain. 

An instrument under seal has distinctions other than 
in name, from one not under seal. Where an instru- 
ment is under seal, the court takes it for granted that 
the price or other consideration (i 79-181) was fair — the 
grantee need not prove that it was, and the grantor 
is not permitted to disprove it, unless mistake or fraud 
is alleged. 

Moreover, a person can claim damages under a con- 
tract under seal, till some time fixed by statute — in 
most states twenty years, has elapsed, while under 
other contracts, six years is the usual limit. (See also 
82 in, 190.) 

Not all deeds convey an interest in land : instruments 
for other purposes are often put under seal. 
82 (f). Essentials The laws regarding deeds vary in differ- 
of deeds. g-^-j- states, but usually the points essential 

in a deed of real estate are that it name the grantor and 
the grantee, preferably with the town, village or city 
of the residence of each, clearly describe the property, 
name the consideration for the transfer, clearly state 
that the land is transferred to the grantee to be held 
by him, and it often has been decided by the courts that 
unless property is conveyed to the grantee and his 



72 The Protection of Rights. [§ 82 / 

heirs, only a life-estate is conveyed. Moreover, a deed, 
in order to be recorded (which, as we shall see hereafter, 
is important) must be witnessed by a notary — that is, 
must contain a notary's certificate that the signature 
was acknowledged before him; and if it is not to be 
recorded in the county where the notary acts, his signa- 
ture must be attested by a certificate from the clerk 
of the county. 

82 (g). Dower and One Other point is necessary if the 
Courtesy. grantor is married. In many of the states, 

if a married male grantor dies, his widow would have an 
interest for her life (called her dower), in one third of 
the property, unless she has relinquished it in the deed; 
tho in a few states, this interest cannot exist in any 
realty but the homestead, and such other realty as 
the husband may die possessed of. The latter policy 
seems the better, as the necessity of having the wife 
join in every deed given by her husband, is seldom of 
any real value to her, and often involves much trouble 
and delay, when she is ill or away from home, and the 
custom is also in restraint of trade. 

On the other hand, in some of the states, the old 
law still exists that if the grantor is a married woman 
and should die, and if she had had a child by her surviv- 
ing husband, unless he had joined in the deed he would 
be entitled to the use of the property for life — called the 
courtesy of it. 
00 ,^ , ./ , ^ While the steps already recited are the 

82 (h). Value of . j j ^t, 

established only ones fiecessary to a aeed, otners are 

^°™^- desirable. Questions regarding deeds have 

been coming before the courts for hundreds of years, 
and lawyers have been shaping the expression of deeds 
so as to prevent such questions arising after the trans- 
action : so it is very well to follow forms that experience 
has approved. Yet there have been many embarrass- 
ments regarding this: the lawyers have gradually 
loaded up forms of deeds with so many provisions and 
so many legal phrases, that common patience could 
not read them, or mere common sense understand 
them. This experience is by no means restricted to 



§ 82 ^*] Law of Real Property, 73 

deeds. The whole business world knows it. Business 
men who habitually make written contracts for any 
specific purpose, and often print them, find that new 
features keep arising in the course of experience, which 
they try to provide for in subsequent contracts. The 
number of these provisions often so swells the printed 
forms, that a fresh start with simple ones is found de- 
sirable, even at the risk of leaving some contingencies 
to be settled when they arise. 

To remedy this unwieldy growth of legal forms, the 
most progressive states have provided by legislative 
statute, brief and simple forms for both deeds and 
mortgages. 

But their use is probably not imperative anywhere, 
but only recommended and given the full sanction of 
the law; yet timid people who want to provide in 
advance for everything that never happens, can make 
their instruments as labored as they please. 
82 (i). Registry, Rcal-cstatc salcs are usually completed 

Title-search. somc wccks after the contract is made, be- 

cause delivery and possession cannot be as simple as with 
personal property, and it takes time to arrange for them. 
If a man has a piece of personal property in his posses- 
sion, and delivers it to you for a consideration, the law 
will not go back of that delivery for any reason except 
the property's being stolen. But a small portion of the 
world's real estate is in plain possession of anybody — 
a man driving with you in the country, or even stand- 
ing with you in a portion of the city, could easily say: 
''This property is mine," and sell it to you, when it 
V\ras really somebody's else, or mortgaged to some- 
body, or burdened with some other rights of somebody. 
Consequently, in early times, as writing became gen- 
eral, records were made of the ownership of property. 
They began, in our race, with William the Conqueror's 
Domesday Book. As our country was settled, each 
commonwealth parceled out the land among the people, 
and gave them deeds, which were put on record (or 
registered — the terms are used interchangeably), usu- 
ally in the county where the land is situated. Each 



74 The Protection of Rights. [§ 82 ^ 

transfer since has been recorded. When any important 
contract affecting land is made, the grantee, if he has 
ordinary sense, has the records searched to find if the 
title is good — that is, if his grantor has a good deed 
from a chain of persons who had good deeds back to 
the first grant by the state. He or his lav/yer also 
looks into the record of mortgages, taxes, and other 
serious burdens on property, to see if the property 
in question is free from them, and writes to the clerks 
of all the courts in the county, to see if they have 
any unsatisfied judgments. 
„-,.,,, , A judgment in this sense is a decree 

82 (J). Judgments. r '' ^ n • , i 

01 a court, usually against a loser m a suit, 
which is put on record, and which makes the property 
of the person against whom it is issued, liable for the 
sum decreed by the court. 

The principal Statute of Limitations was 
of Limitations.^ passcd in the reign of Charles I., and the 
^Appurtenances ^ff^ct of it on real estate, in nearly all cases, 
unless modified by later statute, is to prevent 
any claim taking effect unless it is urged within twenty 
years of any adverse holder taking possession. After 
anybody has held land unopposed for twenty years, the 
law presumes that he had a grant of which evidence 
has been lost. So if the title is found clear for twenty 
years, it is often considered a good risk (72). 

When a right has been used without dispute for the 
time required by the statutes of limitations in the state 
where the land is situated, it becomes a right by pre- 
scription. Then the right becomes legal, even if it 
covers the ownership of the property. Such rights, 
however, are often for privileges less than those of 
ownership, and are then called appurtenances (92). 
They sometimes may so encumber larfd — for instance, 
by preventing building in certain spots, as to be seri- 
ous clouds on title. 

82 r/;. Title In- You can insure against a bad title, just 

surance. ^^ yQ^ ^^^^ against a fire, but the com- 

pany generally first hunts up the title, for its own sake, 
tho the older companies have searched titles of so 



§ 82 m] Law of Real Property. 75 

many pieces of land that they often have to search 
only back to the time of some recent search, besides, 
of course, making inquiries regarding judgments (82/) 
to the clerks of the courts. 

Unless the title is insured, so many questions are apt 
to come up, that usually a good lawyer is needed to 
make the search, and if there is a cloud on the title, 
S2 (m). Clouds on either the trade is called off, and the 
^'^'^- earnest-money returned, with interest, or 

the parties agree to keep the trade open for some fixed 
time, in the hope of paying off incumbrances or other- 
wise clearing the title. 

This second agreement, for delay, should be in writing, 
tho, there being one written agreement already, the 
courts would probably wink at a reasonable delay in 
making another, as some time would be needed to settle 
its conditions. 

As the adjournment of passing the title is probably 
for the mutual convenience, the mutuality would gen- 
erally be deemed a consideration, tho the general view 
is that the original consideration holds over for the 
adjournment. 

If the title is found all clear of outside claims, on 
the appointed day, the grantor gives the grantee a 
deed. 

If the deed is delivered subject to conditions not 
expressed in it, such as the performance of some act 
by the grantee before the deed can take effect, the 
conditions are ineffective. All the provisions of an 
instrument under seal take effect upon delivery. Tho 
one not under seal can be effectively delivered subject 
to any lawful conditions, such as to take effect on a 
certain day if certain prices rule, or even if the weather 
is fit for certain operations. The only way to make 
limiting conditions effective in an instrument under 
seal, is to put them in the instrument itself, or to leave 
it with a third party, to be delivered only when the 
conditions are fulfilled. This is called putting it **in 
escrow" — reducing it to the condition, for the time 
being, of a mere " scroll " or memorandum. 



76 The Protection of Rights. [§ 82 n 

^2(n). Delivery of If the grantor dies before the deed is 
^^^^- given to the grantee or to somebody else 

for him, the deed takes no effect, but the proposed 
grantee can call upon the heirs to give him a new 
deed, and if he does not get it, he has a good claim on 
the estate for any money that he may have paid in 
advance. 
„^ ,, , A mortgage is a right to sell a piece of 

83. Mortgages. . ^ 1 -r ^1 

property, real or personal, if the owner 

of it (the mortgagor) does not, by a certain time, pay 

a debt due the person holding the right (the mortgagee). 

Originally all of the proceeds of such a sale belonged 
to the mortgagee, but now the excess, if any, above 
the loan with interest and expenses, belongs to the 
mortgagor. 

The form of a mortgage does not usually differ from 
that of a deed, until near the end. Originally a mort- 
gage was made by simply handing over a deed, with an 
agreement that the land could be redeemed on paying 
the borrowed money ; and even now the mortgage con- 
veys the property just like a deed, and then provides 
that the mortgagor can have the property back if 
he pays the debt named in a certain bond (or perhaps 
only promissory note) which accompanies the mortgage. 
„^ , , „ _, The difference between a bond and a 

83 (a). Bonds. . . • xt, x i„ j • j 

promissory note is that a bond is under 
seal (82 d) and may hold its maker to the performance 
of some other act than the payment of money, tho it 
always provides for the payment of some value in case 
of non-performance. A promissory note, on the other 
hand, is not under seal, and never promises anything 
but the payment of money at a specified time. 

The right to redeem the property under mortgage is 
called the equity of redemption 

Before accepting a mortgage, it is worth while to 
be sure of a good title, just as before taking a deed: 
if there are any previous mortgages or judgments, they 
have to be satisfied before the new mortgage takes 
effect, and the mortgagee should see that all taxes 
levied previous to the mortgage, and during its life, 



§ 85] Law of Real Property. 77 

are paid by the mortgagor : for they mtist be paid before 
the mortgage can be paid. 

A lease is a right to use real estate for 
a given or ascertainable time, generally 
conditioned on the payment of rent. 

The same precautions of form and search accompany 
a lease, as a deed or mortgage, except as the interest 
is smaller. 

A deed or mortgage or lease being made out in proper 

form, signed, sealed and delivered, the transaction is 

closed as between the parties, but not as between 

OR D- u^ f *u' A them and outsiders. As regards those 
85. Rights of third . . , ,-, .■ ■ r ^ 11 

parties regarding Without Other notice, a piece 01 land be- 

""^^'^ '"^" longs to the person in whose name it is 

registered, and if A, after giving a deed of it to B, were 
to sell or mortgage it to C, and C, without knowledge of 
the existence of B's deed, were to get his instrument re- 
corded before B, it would be good against B's earlier 
instrument not recorded; but record is notice to every- 
body. The time of record is drawn so finely that on 
any recorded instrument, the county register always 
endorses the minute of the hour of the day he receives 
it, and it is considered as recorded that minute. 

If C gets on record first, giving him the property 
would not ordinarily be unfair to B who had paid his 
money first, because if B, by neglecting to record his 
instrument, had left room for C to suppose that A was 
still the owner, it would be B's fault that C had parted 
with his money to A; and so if either B or C is to 
suffer, plainly it should be B. There is a general 
maxim of the law (79) governing such cases, to the 
effect that: ''The law helps those who are wide awake, 
not those who are dozing" * — in this case, it helps the 
man who gets on record first, not the one who goes to 
sleep over his deed. 

Yet creditors could not seize the property of A if they 
had given him credit supposing the land was his, while 
B held an unrecorded deed of it, always provided that 

* Vigilantibus, non dormientibus , suhveniunt jures. 



78 The Protection of Rights. [§86 

^^ ,-rr. p.- J all parties had acted honestly and could 

86. Effect of Fraud. -4. -d 4. j j j j 

prove it. -But an unrecorded deed or 

mortgage always is subject to suspicion of fraudulent 
intent to make the grantor or mortgagor still appear 
to own the land, and so keep a better aspect on his 
credit than it really deserves; and this suspicion of 
fraud might be very readily accepted in court if later 
creditors tried to get hold of the land on the ground of 
fraud in the unrecorded deed or mortgage. 

„-, , , ,,n, Even such a formal instrument as a 

87. Land differs ... . ^ . ^ . 1 p 
from negotiable deed can be set aside on the ground 01 

P^P^"*^' fraud, and so can any instrument or con- 

tract whatever, except in a few rare cases where a 
title to negotiable paper (a bill of exchange, bank 
check, or promissory note) has passed on to an innocent 
holder. Exception is made in some such cases, 
because it has been found better to run the risk of an 
occasional fraud than to choke the avenues of commerce 
by impeding the rapid transfer of such instruments. 
Transfers of land and even of merchandise do not 
occur with such frequency and rapidity. 

00 T u ■ I It may be worth while to know a pecu- 

88. Technical mean-,. . { , . 1 «4 , . ,, ^1 
in-of "Estate" in liar legal use 01 the word estate . ine 

lawyers use the term ''estate in land" to 
signify the quantity and quality of an interest. For 
instance, a mortgagor and mortgagee and a lessee may 
each have an estate in the same piece of land, so may a 
widow have a dower estate, or a widower a courtesy 
estate, and perhaps a creditor may have a judgment, all 
in respect to the same piece of land. The largest pos- 
sible estate is called a fee simple — when the land belongs 
to a man and his heirs or assigns forever. The person 
holding that can carve out all the lesser estates from 
it if he sees fit. Sometimes he carves out so many that 
the fee simple is worth less than nothing — for instance, 
he may give a mortgage for more than his estate is 
worth, or even let- taxes accumulate against it until 
they amount to more than the fee is worth. 

The estate of a lessee is technically called in the law, 
an estate for a year, or from year to year, or for 



§ 89 cf] Law of Real Property. 79 

years. An estate for a single year or 
es^tate?foV Yearns"! from year to year, hardly carries the same 
rights as an estate for years, but usage 
varies a good deal in the different states. Generally 
the rights, so far as not specified, would be inferred 
from the length of the term. A long term would imply 
the tenant's right to make material changes; while in a 
short term, the tenant could not make material changes, 
and would not be apt to, tho he would generally have 
a right to proper use of wood, and to gather a crop that 
he had planted, even if it were not ripe when his estate 
terminated; tho if his estate were for a single year, he 
would not be apt to plant one that would mature too 
late. A lessee has a right to use the estate as his own, 
unless he is restricted in the lease. Otherwise he may 
use woods and mines, gather crops, rem.ove and alter 
buildings, and construct new ones, tho of course if 
his lease is very short, he would not naturally do all 
these tilings. Yet he cannot destroy a wood entirely, 
but may use only what fuel or timber can reasonably 
be spared from it. Nor can he destroy anything else 
so as materially to lessen the value of the property. If 
he did, he would "commit waste", as the lawyers call it, 
which would subject him to paying damages, and might 
forfeit his lease. 

If he puts up a new building, he cannot claim its value 
when his interest terminates, unless by agreement with 
the owner of the fee — the landlord. 

Re airs ^^^ landlord need not make repairs unless 

so stipulated. Otherwise the tenant must 

make enough repairs to return the property in as 

good condition as he received it, "ordinary wear and 

tear excepted". 

The tenant need not repair after a fire unless he 
wants to, but he must continue to pay rent, unless 
otherwise agreed. There is generally a special agree- 
ment, however, that the landlord shall repair unless 
reconstruction is necessary, in which case the lease shall 
come to an end. 

The lessee can transfer his interest to another tenant. 



So The Protection of Rights. [§ §9 ^ 

ort u. o u, 4.^- unless the contrary is stipulated, tlio 

89 b). Subletting. . ... , . , -^ . .^ ' 

he still himself remains liable to the 
landlord. If the tenant does not pass on the money 
to the landlord, the landlord can eject the subtenant, 
but if the subtenant wishes, he can guard against that 
by paying the landlord direct. 

89 (c). Terminabii- If a tenant for a year continues on into 
ity, notice. ^ sccoud year without anything being said, 

he can continue for the whole of it, and must if the 
landlord wishes. To prevent that, notice must be given, 
under the old rule, six months before the end of the 
year; now, generally three months, tho people are not 
very particular as to the exact day or week. 

An estate for a month follows the same general rules 
as an estate for a year. 

90. Rights under ^^e rights of an estate for years belong 
life estate. g^jgo to an estate for life — either for the 
tenant's life or for the life of another person. In the 
latter case, if the tenant die before the other person, 
the other person would not enter into possession, but 
the tenant's heirs, or anybody appointed in his will, 
would enjoy the estate during the life on which it was 
conditioned. 

In addition to the estates already mentioned, there 
are estates terminable at the pleasure of either party — 

91. Under estates called estates at will, which carry hardly 
atw'"' any privileges but occupancy. There are 
some other infrequent estates that it takes something 
of a lawyer to understand. 

^„ , Besides the various recognized estates, 

Q X Ann II rtpn 3 npp*? • • • • 

^^ ' there are certain privileges sometimes at- 

taching to land, either by grant or prescription (82 k), 
and going with it when it is transferred, even without 
being named more specifically than under the general 
title of ''appurtenances." They are generally in the 
nature of rights over neighboring land, such as rights 
to pass or carry pipes or wires over it, or to take wood 
or game or fish from it, rights of way, of drawing water, 
and of "antient light" — light not to be obstructed by 
building (abolished by statute in New York and some 



§ 92 c] Law of Real Property, g-i 

other states) ; and among appurtenances are also gen- 
erally included rights to use party walls, and rights 
over adjoining highways and waters. These rights 
generally "go with the land", as the air and sunlight 
do, tho for safety's sake, grants should generally name 
the land and its appurtenances. 

Appurtenances very often accrue by prescription, 
especially rights to "antient light", rights of way, and 
of drawing water. 

n(a). Party. alls. J^^^^^ "^f^ arc Very frequent in cities 
where a tew inches m the width of a 
room may be valuable. A person building puts half 
his wall on the land of an adjoining neighbor, under 
agreement that the neighbor may insert his beams on 
the wall and use his side of it. Usually a price is 
agreed upon for this, which should be looked up in 
searching title, as the conditions, if registered, follow 
the land, whether expressed in the latest deed or not. 
The adjoining owner need not always pay: for he 
may be so uncertain whether he will want a wall of 
just the character proposed, that while he is willing, 
on the chances, to have the wall partly on his land, he 
will take no farther risk. Yet, for the sake of gaining 
space, the builder may be very glad to put it there 
without any compensation for its use. Neither side 

can tear it down without the consent of the other, but 
either can add in any way that does not damage the 
other. 

92 (b). Land beside When land abuts on roads in built-up 
^''"'^*' districts, the road sometimes belongs to 

the municipality, but in rural regions generally, the 
owner on each side owns to the middle, and is entitled 
to anything growing on his side. The public have right 
of passage over the road, but only so long as they 
keep it in passable condition. If it is not properly 
kept up as a road, the use of it reverts to the owners. 
92 re;. Land by Regarding streams, each riparian owner 

water. owns to the middle, and unless the stream 

is navigable, the riparian owner has the sole right to 
fish in it opposite his bank. Regarding an owner 



82 The Protection oj Rights. [§ 92 ^ 

on a bay miles wide, or on the borders of the sea, the 
laws of different states vary very much. In Maine and 
Massachusetts, for instance, a riparian owner on tide- 
water holds to average low-water mark. But in New 
York, on the other hand, he owns only to the ordi- 
nary high -water mark; the state owns from there for 
three miles out — as far as a cannon would carry at the 
time the right was determined; and beyond that, the 
sea is everybody's. 

As to rights to bathe from the shore of any water, and 
to land on it, nobody has a right on another's land; 
so of course the question cannot arise at all where the 
law is as in Maine and Massachusetts; an(i where the 
law is as in New York, the question can arise only 
regarding the space between high and low water, which 
belongs to the state. The state often grants control 
to the riparian owner. Otherwise the rights so far as 
fixed at all, largely rest on local custom, and are not 
yet generally clearly determined by courts or legisla- 
tion. Ordinarily, whoever pleases will go on the strip 
after shell-fish, tho he cannot cross another's land to 
do it, but must go by boat from some place where he 
has a right to keep a boat. 

Wharves for shipping, in some states, are generally 
owned by municipalities, and some wharf privileges 
are sold or leased to private parties for permanent use, 
while some are retained for the general benefit, usually 
on the payment of fees. In other states, as the riparian 
owners control to low-water mark, landing and wharf 
privileges generally spring from private titles. On the 
great lakes, the ' ' navigable stream ' ' i-ules prevail, not the 
tide-water rules, the riparian owner owning to the middle, 
but the public having the right to navigate and fish. 

The casual landings of people boating for pleasure, or 
merely touching to land a passenger or a package, are 
not generally taken account of; and along shores and 
banks generally, if the privacy of owners is not unrea- 
sonably disturbed, they are not apt to object to others' 
landing. If they do object, the rights are the same as if 
the trespasser had come by land. 



§ 93] -^-^^^ ^/ Real Property. 83 

93. Restrictions. . ^^ ^^ estate is granted subject to con- 
ditions or restrictions of any kind — such 
as not building on certain portions, or not carrying on 
offensive trades, or using only for dwellings, or a limited 
number of dwellings, the restrictions follow it during 
the whole estate originally granted, even if the estate 
be a fee simple; and the records should be searched 
for such restrictions, just as for mortgages, judgments 
or any other encumbrances. Restrictions can lapse 
under the Statute of Limitations (82 k) as even the 
ownership itself can, if somebody successfully acts 
counter to it for twenty years. So, if somebody acts 
counter to a restriction, for twenty years, without any- 
body attempting to enforce the restriction, nobody can 
enforce it thereafter. There are exceptions, but we 
have not space to go into them: of all products of the 
human mind, the Law is the most immense and the 
most complicated — so complicated that there is probably 
no rule without exceptions. That is one reason why 
a person should be very slow to act in a serious matter 
without the advice of a good lawyer. 

Now that we have some notion of the complexities 
of interests in land, it is natural to inquire whether 
it seems inevitable that transfers of them must involve 
so much delay, trouble, expense and risk of bad title; 
and it is pleasant to know that, just as the cumbrous 
forms which deeds had reached have been remedied, 
so remedies have been found for the other cumbrous 
usages. But the remedies have not yet been universally 
adopted, because usages which have been evolved 
through such a long past, have their roots tangled up 
in so many things, that it is hard to eradicate them with- 
out wide disturbance. In some places, some proposed 
land reforms cannot be adopted without amending 
constitutions. Moreover, social affairs generally are 
so complicated that before any comprehensive measure 
is tried, it is hard to tell how it is going to work. There 
is no more certain mark of foll}^ than a glib cocksure 
plan to remedy a social difficulty. Wise people are very 
slow to substitute innovations for evolutions. Yet we 



84 The Protection of Rights. [§93 

must not stick in the mud for lack of trying to get out. 
94. TheTorrens '^^^ t)est method of land transfer yet 
System- suggested, appears, on the whole, to be 

what is known, from its originator, as the Torrens 
System. It was first used in Australia in 1856, then 
spread into the neighboring British possessions, into 
British America, and into Great Britain itself, and has 
lately been enacted in Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, 
and (for some counties) Minnesota.* 

Its principal objects are to save the delay and expense 
of frequent searches of titles, and the losses from uncer- 
tain or imperfect titles. This is effected by granting 
certificates of title under the guarantee of the state. 

Different states arrange different details, but the 
proceedings are something like this: any person claim- 
ing an estate in a piece of land (at least the absolute 
ownership, — a fee simple: the minor estates are not 
always directly provided for, but are indirectly), can 
go to the proper authorities (they vary in different 
states), asking for a certificate of his title. The officers 
search the records, and make out a description of the 
title as it then appears, stating in whom the fee stands, 
and in whom stand any claims, such as dower, mortgages, 
judgments, estates for life or years, etc. Then they 
issue notice by advertisement to all persons claiming 
any rights in the estate, and by mail to all whose addresses 
are known, calling upon them to present statements of 
their rights within a given time. At the end of that 
time, they judge all these rights, and complete their 
statement of. the title according to the rights which 
they consider established. If anybody contests any of 
their judgments, the case is given to a court, from whose 
decision lies a right of appeal to a higher court, whose 
decree is final ; and then a certificate of title embracing 
all the rights is recorded. The certificate may state that 
an unencumbered fee simple rests in one individual; or 
the certificate may vary so far as to indicate a fee vesting 

* The first enactments in Illinois and Ohio did not fit the 
constitutions of those states. In Illinois a second enactment 
has been made which promises success. 



[§94 Law of Real Property. 85 

in several persons, and a variety of rights vesting in 
several other persons. But such as it is, the certificate 
states the authoritative title of the property, which 
can never again be questioned. Duplicates of the cer- 
tificate are given to persons having rights in the property. 

The chief advantages of these certificates are that 
while under previous usage, if anybody wants to sell 
any rights he may have in a piece of real estate, or 
pledge them for a loan, the title has to be searched, at 
an expense of money which may be greater than a loan 
will justify, and at an expense of time which may lead 
to his bankruptcy before the value of his rights can be 
ascertained; but with the modern certificate, he can 
show his rights at a glance, and an expert can appraise 
their value very quickly. Moreover they are guaranteed 
by the state, and therefore not open to any question, as 
rights in real estate under the usual registry system 
always are. 

If the officers make some mistake which does injustice, 
the Massachusetts plan is that the title, as certified, 
cannot be questioned (except, of course, for fraud), 
but if anybody can prove himself wronged without any 
fault or carelessness of his own, he is made good through 
an insurance fund which is accumulated from a trifling 
percentage (one-tenth of one per cent.) of the value of 
each piece of property certified, which is paid when 
the certificate is granted, and also whenever the prop- 
erty passes by descent or vdll. 

The expenses of searching title and preparing the 
certificates do not come out of the general taxes: so 
people who own no land do not have to pay them for 
the benefit of those who do ; charges are made for 
preparing the certificates, but they are generally no more 
than that of an ordinary search of title, and they are paid 
once for all; while under the old system, as much gener- 
ally has to be paid every time a piece of property is sold 
or mortgaged — sometimes a dozen times a year. 

In Massachusetts, the holder of any certificate whose 
interest is less than the fee, is prevented from raising 
money fraudulently, by having a mortgagee's duplicate 



86 The Protection of Rights. [§94 

so stamped; and when the mortgage is paid, it is given 
up and stamped ''canceled". A similar arrangement 
can be made, of course, when certificates are issued to 
holders of other interests, tho there are not always 
provisions for such issue. 

But as a title good to-day may not be good to-mor- 
row, sales and encumbrances coming after the certificate 
is issued are effected by just the same documents as 
before, only the first principle, of course, is that no 
change in the rights to the land takes effect before it 
is recorded in the certificate and its duplicates. Where 
ownership of the fee is changed, a new certificate is 
issued, and the old one stamped "canceled". To use 
an imperfect certificate with intent to defraud, is made 
subject to heavy penalties, and anybody purposing to 
accept a certificate can compare it with the original at 
the recorder's office in a few minutes, for a trifling fee, 
instead of waiting a month to get the title searched, 
and incurring heavy expenses. 

Titles by prescription (82 k) cannot be obtained under 
the Torrens system (in Massachusetts, at least) against 
a title that has been certified under this system, which 
seems, on the whole, a just provision, tho it may well 
be questioned. 

In states adopting the new system, getting a register of 
property under it, is made voluntary, and interested 
persons generally apply for certificates only when they 
sell or mortgage, or grant estates for years. Thus 
the labor is spread over time enough to make it quite 
practicable. 

If mortgages, leases, etc., should make the certificate 
of an active piece of property, unwieldy, there seems 
nothing to prevent the owner applying for a new cer- 
tificate with all the dead changes left out, and simply 
showing in whom the rights vest at date. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



PERSONAL PROPERTY. 

Evolution of Rights in It. 

Having traced the evolution, protection and transfer 
of rights to Property in Land, we come to treat in 
detail of the similar features of the Personal Property 
developed out of the land. In our first summary (51, 
51 a) we found the agencies that develop personal prop- 
erty to be Land, Labor and Ability. 

Labor generally means effort of any unattractive 
kind, but here I mean the work of a man's body. 

When we were speaking of the monkey picking the 
fruit, we called the third factor "intelligence", but 
** intelligence" is not broad enough to cover the ground: 
judgment, knowledge, forethought patience, honesty 
and a host of other qualities are needed now, and we 
sum them up under the name of Ability. 

The differences in men are so marked, then, as to 
divide them into two classes — men without much ability, 
who perform the manual labor, and men with great 
ability, who tell the others what labor to perform. 
Under such a classification, as under others in all sciences, 
the divisions overlap somewhat, but they will do very 
well for our purpose, if we bear in mind two of the 
particulars in which the classification falls short. 
95. Product varies The first is that many laboring men, tho 
with ability, guided more or less by the ability of other 

87 



88 The Protection of Rights. [§95 

men, have ability of their own. Tho a common laborer 
has usually but little ability, and shows it by getting 
only a dollar a day, an average mechanic has much 
more ability, and shows it by getting two or three dol- 
lars a day; while a small number of mechanics of con- 
siderable ability, get as high as even ten or twenty 
dollars a day. 

As Mr. John A. Hill said in his notable circular to 
his men (reprinted in The World's Work for February, 
1906) during the printing strike: "Those of you who 
know me, know that I am inclined to pay more than 
the scale to good men, or grant them other privileges 
that amount to the same thing." 

An illustration of what labor guided by its own 
ability, can do, was afforded in the truckmen's strike 
in New Haven in 1903, when some thirty Yale stu- 
dents took the places of the strikers, as a lark. They 
were found, despite their inexperience, to do more 
loading and unloading than twice as many truckmen. 
But men of such ability do not remain truckmen, but 
are soon guiding the labors of other men. 

In successful businesses, the workmen are nearly 
always under the guidance of men of vastly greater 
ability, who get many times as much as the workmen. 

The second qualification to bear in mind if we treat 
the industrial world as divided into men of labor and 
men of ability, is that, in England at least, the laborers 
are fast learning to be their own guides. Cooperative 
industries carried on by the workers themselves, made 
wonderful progress during the latter part of the nine- 
teenth century. 

The rewards of ability vary much more than those 
of manual labor. When you yet up into the ability 
that can guide the labor of others, men vary much 
more than they do when the ability is only enough to 
guide one's own labor; and in the long run, the re- 
wards vary somewhat with relation to the ability, tho 
the men of the very greatest inventive ability, like the 
creators of the steam-engine, the telegraph, the power 
loom, the cotton-gin, the reaping-machine, and other 



§ 95 ^] Personal Property. 89 

great inventions, who influence the labor of nations 
and generations, never reap a tithe of their own pro- 
duction; while on the other hand men of administra- 
tive ability, like Stewart and Vanderbilt, whose work 
is mainly in handling other men, and whose work lives 
but little longer than they do (except in their families' 
fortunes) reap a much larger proportion of their pro- 
duction. 

Practically, a man's ability is determined by the 
value of what he produces ; and in the long run, despite 
the poor pay of some of the inventors, most men are 
paid accordingly. 

95(a). even the ^ Striking proof of how wagcs Vary 

product of the with ability, is given in Brassey's "Work 

lowest Laborers. ■, ttt ,, tt j_i j. i r i 

and Wages , He says that he found wages 
the world over regulated by the amount of ability; he 
got the same labor for the same amount of money in 
one part of the world as in another. If he paid ten 
cents a day in India, it took ten men to accomplish 
the results that it took one to accomplish in countries 
where he paid a dollar a day. In May, 1905, the 
manager of the Corbin estate in Greenville, Miss., 
reported that in cotton he could make $5 with Italian 
labor where he could make $1 with negro. 

The difference did not lie in muscular strength. Even 
in mere picking or shoveling, a man of ability will accom- 
plish more than a man of much less ability and more 
strength: it is more a matter of ability than of 
strength — of intelligence in work, including energy and 
faithfulness, which are considerable elements of ability. 

We shall find, as we go on, that false reasoning, 
especially regarding convict labor and protective tariffs, 
is often based on a false assumption that a day's work 
is the same thing from one wage-earner as from another, 
in one country as in another, and at one price as at 
another: so we may as well consider some more illus- 
trations of the utter falsity of any such ideas. In 
Canada, Brassey found English labor at 5s. 6d. cheaper 
than Irish at 3s. 6d.; in England, 3s. 6d. cheaper than 
IS. 6d. in Ireland, or than 5d. in India. In a stone- 



90 The Protection of Rights. [§ 95 ^ 

quarry in France, he paid Englishmen 6 francs a day, 
Irishmen 4, and Frenchmen 3, and found the EngHsh- 
men the cheapest of the lot. General V/alker * says 
that the English cotton-spinner is paid twelve times as 
much as the East-Indian, and yet undersells him in 
his own market; that an English weaver tends two 
or three times as many looms as a Russian, and that 
the English looms run faster. Brassey says that three 
English railway navvies do the work of five French 
ones. It is universally known that American laborers 
surpass those of the rest of the world in efficiency — 
strength, intelligence, and saving, as much as they 
do in pay. In France it takes forty-two men to do 
the work at an iron-furnace, that in England is done 
by twenty-five. English farm.ers on the shores of the 
Hellespont prefer to give Greeks £10 a year rather 
than give Turks £t, . Women in English cotton-factories 
get about 13s. a week, while French, German and 
Belgian women get about 8, and Russians about 2^; 
and the English labor is the cheapest. In different 
parts of England itself, agricultural wages varied from 
9s. per week to i6s., and the i6s. laborers were the 
cheapest. Mr. Atkinson says ("Facts and Figures") : 
"With one dollar's worth of labor . . . here with 
labor-saving machinery, we can buy the day's hand- 
work ... of Russia, Italy and Asia.'^ 

In view of such startling facts, no wonder that 
there is a constant conflict between Labor and Ability, 

* Political Economy, Advanced Course. General Walker's 
"The Wages Question", Chapter III, should be read on this 
and collateral topics. 

General Walker farther quotes various authorities to the 
following effect: an EngHsh wood-sawyer will do the work 
of thirty-two East-Indian ones. He gets but about eight 
times the pay. An English laborer does and receives about 
twice as much as an Irish one. Tho provisions are cheaper 
in Russia than in England, it costs six to eight times as much 
to mow an acre of hay in Russia as in England. It takes 
twice as many hands to do most kinds of factory work in 
France and Germany as in England. In Belgium a hand prints 
from one hundred and sixteen to three hundred pieces of cloth 
a day, in England the average is one thousand. 



§ 97 <^] Personal Property. 91 

no n'XE I. r especiallv as many even claim that the 

96. Difticulty of ^ 11^111 1 1 

adjusting Rights men wno do the hand-work make every- 

^^t^en Miiity thing and ought to have everything. Let 
us, then, try to ascertain how the respec- 
tive property rights of Labor and Abihty are 
evolved. It is plain enough how Labor increases pro- 
duction, but outside of the ability of the individual 
laborer, it is not so plain where Ability first begins to 
increase it. That most important step takes place 
wherever one man wisely tells another what to do. A 

97. General common laborer cannot dig a ditch straight 
Functions of without a person of superior ability to 

' '^^ show him how; or he can't go into a wood 

and chop down the trees that ought to be taken, with- 
out somebody of superior ability to mark them for 
him — he cannot even remember them unless they are 
marked, but will chop down the wrong ones.* 

Such a laborer is but the primitive man, 
izJfman fofes ' tho cvolvcd Up to a Certain disadvan- 
fnHpendenoe. ^^g^- The savage man is generally able 
to get his food • from hunting and fish- 
ing, and to make his simple clothes and shelter. But 
the so-called civilized man, especially in villages and 
cities, has not generally the woods and streams to resort 
to, and is not accustomed, like the savages, to make 
his own raiment and dwelling. Therefore, as a rule, 
the moderately evolved man, unless a higher evolved 
man initiates an enterprise and gives him a chance 
to take part in it, cannot get his own food, clothing 
and vShelter, and is unable to find anything to do. 
The man of only average ability, if he is out of a job, 
does not get another, before the man of more than 
average ability offers him one. Until then he is apt to 
sit down and fold his hands, and complain that he has 
not tools and material, and could not find a customer 

* The author once took an excellent woodchopper into 
some pleasure-grounds and pointed out a dead tree to be cut 
down. Near it stood a beautiful live one. After the employer's 
back was turned, the chopper cut the live one and left the dead 
one standing. 



92 The Protection of Rights. [§ 97 ^ 

if he had, etc., etc. And for all this, he blames the rest 
of mankind: not himself and his maker. But another 
type of man, tho vastly rarer, goes and puts in the 
first load of coal he finds lying on the sidewalk, or 
shovels off the first bit of snow he finds unremoved, or 
in summer mows the first lawn that needs it, or takes 
some other of the thousand jobs lying around for some- 
body to do. This man, however, is soon an enterpriser, 
while the other man is always a wage-earner, and 
blames the enterpriser for it. It would be well if 
everybody should read Sill's little poem ''Opportunity" 
and Bunner's little story "Zadoc Pine". Both are 
admirable and enjoyable as pieces of literature, and as 
instructive as they are delightful. 

97 (b) Thin s -^^y ^^.tcrial thing made by man is 

made'to embody simply the embodiment of an idea. The 
thoughts. value of the thing depends mainly on the 

value of the idea; and as industries have advanced, the 
ideas have more and more been contributed by excep- 
tional men, and embodied by ordinary men. 

There is hardly a thing made for wages, from pins to 
palaces, that is not simply a putting into form, by 
many men, of ideas furnished by a few. Everything 
turned out in the factory is of a shape and size that 
somebody else tells the laborers to make. The laborers 
on every railroad are simply building a line laid out, 
in direction, grades, width, material, by somebody else; 
building stations located and designed by somebody 
else; making locomotives and cars designed by some- 
body else with wonderful ingenuities and conveniences 
invented by somebody else; and v/hen the road is 
finished, running trains at hours and rates of speed 
devised by somebody else. 

Take away the few men of ability, and none of these 
things could exist; take away an equal number of 
laborers, and the things would exist all the same. 
^l(c). Averages Now ability is rare. There is a law 

and Ability, Qf nature, first brought prominently for- 

ward in regard to human relations by Galton, that of 
a given number of things of the same kind, the most 



§ 97 ^] Personal Property. 93 

will cluster around the average, and become rarer as 
they depart from the average. So it is with men: 
of a hundred, probably eighty will have ability enough 
to produce only the equivalent of the minimum wages 
— for comparison's sake, say a dollar a day; ten out 
of the hundred can produce, say, two dollars; four, 
four dollars; three, ten dollars; two, twenty dollars; 
and possibly one, fifty dollars. If you want to find a 
hundred-dollar-a-day man, you will probably have to 
look into a group of a thousand men; to find a Van- 
derbilt, you will need a generation; for a Watt or an 
Edison, a century; for a Euclid or a Newton, ten or 
twenty centuries; and for an Aristotle or a Spencer, 
half of human experience. 

Galton represents the facts graphically by a target 
where the shots are naturally thickest at the center, and 
scattering toward the edges. For our purpose, the 
representation would be better by a horizontal band 
of dots, with the dots thickest along the space represent- 
ing the average, half way from the top to the bottom 
of the band, and growing thinner, toward the' upper 
and lower edges. Then a few should be scattered above, 
to indicate men of special ability; and a few below, to 
indicate men of special stupidity. 

97 w. The lower ^°^ ^^^ ^^^ bclow the average of 
depends on the ability havc douc their best only under 
'^ ^^' the guidance of the men above it. The 

workmen have needed their foremen, the foremen have 
needed their employers, the employers have needed 
the Watts and Edisons, the Watts and Edisons have 
needed the Euclids and Newtons, and the Euclids and 
Newtons have, unconsciously perhaps, needed the whole 
environment of thought shaped by an Aristotle or (to 
shift the matter more toward the future) by a Spencer. 

And it is not well to forget, as an essential of even 
material well-being, the moral atmosphere created by 
a Gautama, or a Christ. 

But to come back to our daily experience. 
97 (e). "Finds In the higher walks of industry, the man 

"^°*''^-" of ability finds the work for other men to 



94 The Protection of Rights. [§97^ 

do : they go to him for work, and unless he ' ' gives work ", 
they remain among "the unemployed". 
97 (f). Increases He increases product by organizing men 
product. Qf comparatively little ability so that they 

can produce what is wanted, and produce more of it, 
carry more and exchange more than they could if left 
to themselves. He decides what enterprises will pay, 
undertakes them, gets together the capital for them, 
and often invents machinery and industrial processes. 
97 (g). Saves He cffccts economies, often, if he is a 

waste. man of sufficient ability, by abandoning 

enterprises before they run at a loss. Moreover, as 
Labor, unless guided by Ability, either on the laborer's 
own part or that of his manager, is simply the mere 
physical effort of the animal or the savage, it is apt to 
be wasteful, and often destroys more. than it produces. 
In most cases, unless the superintendent of the laborers 
has enough ability to set them making the proper 
things the proper way, they produce less than nothing, 
by spoiling material and producing articles that will 
not sell for what they cost. The "bargain-stores" con- 
tain many things not worth as much as the materials 
and wear of tools (not to count the labor) that it took to 
make them. On the other hand. Labor guided by Abil- 
ity makes nearly everything it touches worth more than 
it was before. 

The man of ability, however, generally does more than 
conduct the processes ; he generally organizes the enter- 
prise from the beginning. Because he undertakes the en- 
terprise, he has sometimes been called the undertaker, 
and some people who do not like that word have taken 
a French equivalent, entrepreneur, but English is good 
enough for us, and we will henceforth call him the enter- 
priser, as probably has been done more than once already. 
98. Detailed Func- ^s already intimated, the enterpriser 
tions of Ability. ];^as first to decide what enterprise will pay; 
and that is the most difficult task of all. A market ma}^ 
reach to the remotest corners of the world, or may be 
restricted to a fastidious class in a few great cities, or 
may depend on unaccountable shifts of fashion, or on a 



§ 99] Personal Property. 95 

million mysterious causes : yet the enterpriser must know 
^^ (a). Prophesy- what the market wants, and how much. 
ing wants. ^^q Other man, perhaps, so needs the 

genius of the prophet. It is no wonder that only one 
man in thousands has it to any marked degree. 
98r6;. Raising After the prophet has determined what 

capital. -(-Q (Jq^ unless he has enough money of his 

own (which is seldom the case, in the industries so big as 
to supply us most cheaply) he must get other people to 
put in their money. The capacity to find them and to 
make them trust him, is one great and rare element of 
Ability. 

98 re;. At the Next, if he wants a factory, he has to 

"J°*''<S' decide on the building and machinery that 

will pay, and see them well and economically constructed ; 
to buy the material in the best market and at the most 
favorable time, sometimes getting credit if he thinks 
it wise to buy more than he has money to pay for at 
the time; to get together the men, using great judgment 
of human nature in getting honest and capable foremen 
and accountants; to see that the men are properly 
organized, as already explained (and he has, by the 
way, to keep this in mind in getting up his factory 
and machinery) ; then he has to manage the men and 
their strikes and labor-union troubles. 
98 r^;. Outside of Out side of his works, he must determine 
the worfis. from day to day just what styles of his 

product are apt to strike the coming tastes and fashions, 
and when and of what kinds to make big lots and 
small ones; to make his product known by wise and 
economical advertising; to find the best market for it, 
both in time and place; to know whom to trust and 
whom to press foir money, and how to keep his trade; 
and then he has to collect the money. All this time 
he has to see to his accounts and taxes, and if he can, 
occasionally get a little time to eat and sleep and 
recreate himself. 

Such is the view generally entertained by 

of 'the°^E'n?erpriser. co^npetent people, of what the enterpriser 

has to do. The view generally entertained 



96 The Protection of Rights. [§99 

by other people, however, is that, as he seldom soils his 
hands, or uses any tool but a pen, he has nothing to do, 
but is a mere drone living on money that really belongs 
to the people who do the hand-work. Because the 
captain of industry does not actually use a tool, any more 
than a military leader actually uses a weapon, most of 
the people who cheered Dewey on his return from 
Manila are ready to say that a captain of industry is 
entitled to none of the results, because the work is all 
done by his men. The truth is that they would have 
been as powerless without him, as a fleet without its 
Dewey, or an army without its Grant. 
100. Division of The most noticeable process by which the 

'abor. enterpriser increases and cheapens pro- 

duction is by the effective division of labor. In mak- 
ing almost anything, there are a good many processes. 
If one man performs them all, he will not be as skilful 
in any one of them — as able to do that one nearly as 
often in an hour, or as well, as if he practises that one 
alone. Besides, if he effects a dozen, he will lose time 
in changing from one to another. Hence it is a great 
aid to production, to have a factory big enough to 
have separate men for separate processes. But if 

there are a dozen processes, that does not necessarily 
mean a dozen men: some processes would take more 
time than others, so the man doing the quick ones 
would need more men doing the others, to keep up 
with him; or possibly in a small factory it would be 
cheaper to have some man do more than one process: 
that would of course depend upon the size of the fac- 
tory, and it would also depend on the ability of the 
manager: unless he decided wisely how to portion out 
the work, he would have too many men for one process, 
and too few for another, and so throw everybody's 
work out of gear. If the men decide this themselves, 
each man would want to do what he liked best, and 
he could not know as much about the other men's work, 
and what the material and the total result aimed at 
would require, as a man whose business it should be, 
while doing nothing special himself, to watch it all, 



§ I02 Personal Property. 97 

and make all work together. Even where workmen 
have owned an establishment together, they have had 
to make a leader and obey him, and generally to pay 
him more than any of the workmen got (118). When 
101. Few men can ^^ comes to watching it all, there are few 
conduct large men that have the ability, even if they 
enterprises. could have the Opportunity: most men 

who try management make a botch of it (120). As a 
matter of fact, of the men who try to perform the duties 
of the enterpriser, the vast majority fail.* 

The general reason that very few men are fit to 
conduct a large business, while so many men con- 
duct small ones, seems to be that for a large business, 
the preparations have to be made for months — some- 
times years, ahead. The little businesses that buy 
from the large ones, can buy from one day to the next, 
and need only take from day to day, or even from 
hour to hour, what they see that people want. More- 
over, as a large business cannot have the enterpriser's 
eye everywhere at once, he must leave much of the 
supervision to lieutenants who themselves have ability; 
and the capacity to search out and select good lieuten- 
ants is rare, especially in combination with the other 
rare powers that an enterpriser needs. 
102 Ability out- What has been said in regard to organiz- 

side' of tangible ing factories — producing tangible goods, ap- 
pro uc ion. plies equally to organizing stores and rail- 
roads and steamships and hotels and all other forms of 
industry. It used to be a jocose way of describing a 
man of little ability, to say: "He can't keep a hotel." 
Unless there were men who could organize something 
bigger than a stage-coach, we should have to go in 

* Mr. Joseph H. Walker of Worcester, Mass., lately found 
on investigation that of every hundred men in business in that 
place in 1845, sixty-seven were out in i860. Out of seventy- 
live manufacturers in 1850, only thirty left business with any 
property, and onty six of the sons of the seventy-five had any 
property. In i860 there were one hundred and seven manu- 
facturers, and only sixty left business with property. There 
had not been time for many deaths: so failures are the only 
explanation. (Wells, "Recent Economic Changes.") 



98 The Protection of Rights. [§ 102 

stage-coaches; unless there were men who could or- 
ganize something bigger than a sloop, we should have 
to go in sloops; unless there were men who could or- 
ganize the big shops, we should have to run all over 
the cities to get what we want from a variety of little 
ones, and then should not have as wide an assortment 
to choose from, or be able to get what we could find, 
at as low a price. 

103 "The Great ^"^ Stores and railroads, etc., where 
Industr'" cheap- there cannot be much division of labor, 
ens pro uct. ^j^^ cheapening is effected by making the 

industries large: in most industries, the more you do 
of a thing, the cheaper you can do it. A bookkeeper 
can make a figure 9 as cheaply as he can make a 
figure I ; a wheelbarrow can carry a bushel of potatoes 
as cheaply as it can carry one ; a locomotive can take 
a dozen cars in a train as cheaply as one; a man of 
ability can turn out or handle a thousand pieces of 
goods easier than a man of no ability can turn out or 
handle one. Stewart, the first great shopkeeper in 
New York, as compared with all previous shopkeepers, 
is said to have saved the people who shopped with 
him ten per cent. Commodore Vanderbilt, by cheapen- 
ing freights from the grain-raising and flour-milling 
regions of the West, is estimated to have saved every 
man on the seaboard a dollar on each barrel of flour 
that he bought. 

104. Enterpriser's '^^^ fortunes of men of ability are 
income not at ex- Usually only a small portion of what they 
pense of Labor. ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ people. If the 

inventor of the steam-engine were alive and could have 
half that he has saved for and bestowed on other people, 
probably no one country in the world would be rich 
enough to pay what all countries together owe him. 

105. Invention and Let US look into this matter of inven- 
Evoiution. tions a little more closely: we shall have 
to refer to it more than once. What do we really mean 
by "the inventor of the steam-engine"? The fact is 
that no one man ever invented any great thing. The 
word inventor is generally used in any particular country. 



§ io6] Personal Property. 99 

for the last man in that country who took the last im- 
portant step in the evolution of any great invention. 
When you try to find out who invented the steam-engine 
or the telegraph, for instance, from a book — especially a 
schoolbook designed to teach patriotism, if it is an 
English book, you will be apt to find the credit given 
to an Englishman; if a French book, to a Frenchman; 
if a German book, to a German; and so on. The 
explanation is not so much that patriotism goes wide 
of the truth, as that, in each process, so many elements 
enter, that it has taken a long time to evolve them; and 
that during this long time, the whole civilized world 
has learned 'about them, and people in all countries 
were apt to take the final step at about the same time 
— or rather a variety of steps which accomplish the 
result. 

But whether we call each important apparatus giv- 
ing us the control over the powers of Nature an evolu- 
tion or an invention, it is the product of ability. 
106. Labor abounds Now which produces most of the wealth 
in poorest countries, of the world, Nature, Labor or Ability? 
Generally Nature holds out more wealth to the poorest 
savages than to the richest people on earth, because the 
wealth of the savage's country is yet untouched; but 
the savage has not the ability to develop it. Labor is 
more abundant amid the famines of China and India 
than amid the wealth of Europe and America, but the 
Chinese and Indians have not the ability to guide it. 
So, as places with the most natural wealth and the most 
labor are the poorest, and those with the most ability, 
even tho their natural wealth be partly used up, are 
the richest, the difference between the rich peoples and 
the poor ones must depend upon ability. 

From the point of view of civilization, then, the 
men who make inventions and organize industry 
secure us all that we have in advance of the people 
whose industries are small. If there were no great 
inventors and organizers of industry, the civilized world 
would have to go backward to the condition of people 
like the Chinese and East-Indians, who have little inven- 

Lora 



lOO The Protection of Rights. [§ io6 

tion or organized industry, and the world would have 
to stay there until men of ability should arise. 

But tho our discussion must deal principally with the 
agencies which give all men, in proportion to their 
means, the largest variety of utilities at the lowest 
price, I should be very sorry to be tmderstood as claim- 
ing that result as alone constituting civilization. The 
civilizations of Greece and Japan show us much to 
desire, and yet they have been characterized by a noble 
simplicity that suggests the question whether our greater 
number of appliances may not divert too much of our 

attention from more important things. 

» 

_ Now we come to a hard question, 

priser must nay When the product is sold, is it at all cer- 
good wages. ^^^^^ th^d, the enterprisers will give the 

employees their correct share? In other words, are 
wages generally fair ? Of course the share is generally 
given before the collection is made — a lump sum is 
agreed upon. There is no way of making each man's 
sum exactly equal to his share in production; but in 
the long run, wages must reach an average that is fair, 
and probably more than fair: the able laborer gets 
more than the unable one everywhere (95 a). 

The reason is not only that men of ability so increase 
the product that they can afford to pay more than the 
laborers would produce alone, but because all men so 
much prefer to be employers rather than employed, 
that they will pay all they can afford, andmore, rather 
than be driven out of doing business for themselves. 
Therefore, except in times of unusual depression, there 
are employers actually bidding more for labor than they 
can really get back from it. They can bid high because 
men of little ability are constantly saving or inheriting or 
borrowing capital. This they fritter away in bidding 
for labor to conduct enterprises that are beyond them. 
Yet while men of little ability pay more for labor than 
they can make it worth, men of great ability can make 
it worth more, and therefore, in average circum- 
stances, bid it up in competition with each other to 



§ I op] Personal Property. lor 

the point where they are left only a reasonable 
profit. 

But in times of depression, when there 
^badthnms^.^^" '" ^^^ ^^"^ ^^ many jobs as there are men, 
men who need places often take work 
for really less than they produce; yet probably not 
oftener than employers pay more than the market will 
return, rather than shut down. 

So much for the services that an enterpriser, when 
he has ability enough to succeed, renders to the com- 
munity and to his workmen. Now if he pays his men 
108 Whp ^^^ they produce, or more, of course he 

Ability's reward can get his reward only out of product 
does come from. ^^^^ would. not exist unless his ability 
called it into being. True, he does not make or even 
handle a thing with his own hands, but he enables other 
men to make or handle two, or perhaps a hundred 
and two, where they could otherwise handle only one. 
He gets his reward by making more things with a given 
amount of plant, labor and material. Moreover, where 
there is a big supply, things are always cheaper than 
where there is a scant supply. 

But Vanderbilt and Stewart did not make things, 
yet in one sense they did make things-in-New-York 
that otherwise would have been things-in-Minnesota, or 
things-in-Belfast. There is a difference in value between 
a thing-in-New-York and a thing-in-Minnesota. If 
there are more barrels of flour in Minnesota than people 
want, and not as many in New York as people want, 
people in New York will give more for them than people 
in Minnesota. The man who carries them, adds to 
their value, and if he carries them cheaply, people in 
New York can afford to pay him a profit for carrying 
them. So with linen between Belfast and New York, 
and in short with all articles moved by commerce. 

It is a very prevalent fallacy that those 
IiofalFby'iiand" ^^^ ^^ ^^"^ affect the mechanical or chem- 
ical qualities of an article, "produce noth- 
ing". This is but an extension of the fallacy that the 
enterpriser produces nothing, because he does not put 



I02 The Protection of Rights. [§ 109 

his hands to his product. The value of an article 
depends upon its capacity to satisfy a need: so every 
man who touches an article tovvrard placing it where 
it is more needed, must add to its value — ^must really 
"produce" the added value. So of course to a still 
greater extent, must a man who organizes transporta- 
tion and exchange. 

To go a step farther, the bankers and promoters who 
finance these agencies, add to the value of the articles 
handled; and to take other steps, so do the govern- 
ments which regulate all finance and industry; so do 
the armies and navies which defend the country; and 
now, to take it to a higher issue, so do the thinkers 
and writers who promulgate the correct mechanical and 
economic principles on which roads, machinery, vessels 
and warehouses should be built ; and f arm- 
if^baJSnomks. ^^S' mining, manufacturing, transporta- 
tion, exchange, banking, promoting, gov- 
erning, and fighting be conducted. Still another step : 
the promulgation of incorrect principles of finance and 
taxation probably destroys more value than earth- 
quakes, eruptions and wars. The silver agitation about 
1890 was estimated by David A. Wells to have de- 
stroyed values to the extent of a thousand million 
dollars, and the greenback currency of the civil war 
probably destroyed as much, and we shall see farther 
evidences of destruction, when we come to consider 
taxation. 

To take a step higher still: economic 
on'sS^morals"^ ^^^ political principles and moral prin- 
ciples shade into each other, and are often 
identical; so, for that matter, do mechanical principles 
and moral principles: "an honest job" is a phrase of 
very wide and just application. It ought to be easy 
then to realize that the promulgators of sound morals 
and the inspirers of good conduct — the good preachers 
and orators and writers, also create value in material 
things — probably more value than all other classes of 
men put together. Probably if all that has been accom- 
plished in the world by Christ, Confucius and Gautama, 



§ 112] Personal Property. 103 

not to speak of Aristotle, Bacon and Spencer, could be 
blotted out to-morrow, much the greater part of the 
value in material things would be destroyed. An ade- 
quate explanation of how this would come about, would 
carry us farther afield than this treatise can go; but 
some hints that will help the competent student to work 
the matter out for himself, have already been given, 
and if he will keep the subject in mind, he will find it 
full of such hints. Some very specific ones are given 
in paragraphs 330-330(6). He can start now with the 
reflection that with the current morality swept away, 
his own pocketbook and the coat on his back would be 
vastly less safe, and therefore vastly less valuable, the 
next time he leaves his study, and even while he reads 
this in his study. 

It hardly need be said that the pay of 
distributfol?.'^^^ °^ "^^^ various contributors to the value of 
goods is very unevenly distributed, and 
one is sometimes tempted to believe that those who 
contribute most, get least. Certainly the august beings 
who rule the centuries from their tombs, knew little 
material splendor; and certainly the men at the other 
extreme who can do nothing but what they are told, 
and do that poorly, get a share of the good things of 
life, which, tho small, is larger than their own production 
— vastly larger than they could get if left to themselves. 
And paradoxical as it seems, and in illustration of the 
old saw that extremes meet, is the fact that in recent 
times, the other portion of the business world that has 
been notoriously getting more than its share of produc- 
tion, is at the other end of the line — not the enterprisers 
who are immediately associated with labor — not the 
"captains of industry" at the factories and stores or 
even on the great public works like the railroads and 
steamship lines, but those who determine what great 
public enterprises are needed, and gather up the scattered 
units of capital from all over the country or all over 
the financial world, into masses big enough for the great 
enterprises — the promoters of the railways and trusts — ■ 
the bankers and the officers of the great insurance com- 



I04 The Protection of Rights. [§112 

panics and other financial corporations. In their prin- 
cipal developments, the functions of these collectors of 
the general capital are comparatively new, and are not 
yet well regulated by competition or by law, or even 
by public opinion, which is just now in a state of hysterics 
over them. It has therefore been easy for the men 
conducting these functions to take heavy toll on the 
money of other people passing through their hands. A 
heavy toll is legitimate, for the ability exercised is great ; 
but that ability is too often devoted to making the toll 
unduly great. 

113, Paradoxes of The subject, however, is now prominently 
opinion- before public opinion and the law, and 

reasonable regulation must in time be secured — secured 
probably long before reasonable regulation will be 
secured for the striking, boycotting, rioting, burning, 
murdering brute who thinks that because his hands 
follow the dictate of other men's brains, he makes 
everything and is entitled to everything; and assumes 
that his right to stop work is a right to conspire with 
others to stop together, and force others to stop with 
them, and so paralyze the activities on which the 
welfare of all depends — of himself more than the others, 
if he but had the wit to see it. 

114 Wh turns Now we reach the very serious question 

of labor are nearly of how it comes that the laborer seldom 
^^^^' gets anything above the current rate of 

wages, while the enterpriser and promoter may get 
hundreds or thousands of dollars a day. The reason 
is that things which can be found anywhere, like staple 
products or common labor, are always offered for sale 
in lively competition, and so the price is driven down 
to pretty near the cost of production. Mere manual 
labor of the pick and shovel is found anywhere, and 
can live on cheap food and lodging: therefore its cost 
is low. The more intelligent labor of the high-class 
mechanic, needs a nervous system kept well by good 
food, sleep and shelter, informed by some education, 
and recreated by some amusement. These things cost 



§ 115] Personal Property. 105 

more money than the coarse laborer's Hving, and are not 
as generally to be found: so the mechanic gets higher 
wages than the mere digger ; and the high-class mechanic 
gets higher wages than the low-class one. Neverthe- 
less, there are enough mechanics of nearly all grades to 
make competition among them active (despite the 
regulation of their trade-unions), and so, of course, their 
labor is kept at a recognized, tho somewhat fluctuating, 
market price. 

Now while all this shows why Labor is 
Ability Vafy widely, restricted to its regular wages, how is it, 
when we get into entirely different con- 
ditions, with the irregular and often enormous profits 
of Ability? Ability is scarce: it generally does not 
compete for employment, but employs itself; hence 
there is no price fixed for it. Whenever it does accept 
wages — as in the case of special mechanics, electricians, 
chemists, etc., or upper clerks, managers, presidents of 
companies, etc., the salary is a matter of special arrange- 
ment, and generally is accompanied by an interest in 
profits besides, not to speak of the St. Valentine's Day 
check of $100,000, from the New York Metropolitan 
Street Railway to Mr. Vreeland, its president. 

What determines this varying and sometimes enor- 
mous factor of profits, is that as wages and raw material 
have a current market price, a given amount of them 
being paid for by different men of ability, they will 
get out different amounts of product, varying in propor- 
tion to the different amounts of ability of the enter- 
prisers ; and these will produce and market this product 
at different rates of expense for plant, office expenses, 
interest on capital, freight, advertising, drumming, col- 
lecting bad debts, etc., etc. They will all have to sell 
at pretty nearly the same price: that being fixed by 
those having leas^t talent for making good sales and 
holding out for high prices. The others will have to come 
down very near to that price to get a market; or some- 
times, tho seldom, an able man may even go below the 
current price for the sake of broadening his market. But 
however the price may be fixed, the profits of each enter- 



io6 The Protection of Rights. [§ii5 

priser will be the difference between his price and the cost 
of producing and marketing. That difference may be 
on the wrong side for those who produce least with a 
given amount of wages and raw material, and are most 
extravagant in office expenses, advertising, freight, etc. 
Those v/ho exercise most ability in these particulars, 
will of course have the most profit. That profit may be 
enormously increased if the ability is of the very excep- 
tional kind that generally anticipates the course of the 
market, and buys material and holds on to product 
before a rise, and sells before a fall. 
,,^ ^ .^ ,, i The capitalist, instead of being the re- 

116. Capital's return ■ • ^ T ^i i- > i i • 

more like. Labor's cipient oi the lion s share, as he is com- 

than Ability's. monly held to be, generally is that, only so 
far as he is both capitalist and enterpriser. Otherwise, 
he is only about on a par with the wage-earner. Capital 
is. everywhere, and there is a market rate for it, just 
as for wages, tho as it does not generally need its in- 
come from week to week, it is more apt to take chances 
at a share of the profits than the laborer is : the laborer 
nearly always (tho not always — not in fisheries, for in- 
stance) commutes his share for a fixed sum regularly 
paid. 

As the laborer and the capitalist are so nearly in 
the same boat, the unending talk of the conflict between 
capital and labor is mainly a survival of words from 
old conditions. In the early days of the great industry, 
the capitalist and the enterpriser were generally the 
same man; but even then, the struggle for shares of 
product was really with him as an enterpriser rather 
than as a capitalist. Nowadays when the enterpriser 
is so generally merely an officer of a corporation, in 
which his share may be little or nothing, and when 
he is apt to be a mere borrower of all or most of his 
capital, capital's share of product is nearly as fixed as 
labor's, and the enterpriser is really the person struggling 
to see how much he can realize after paying both. 

The conflict, then, so far as there is any conflict, is 
between Ability on one side, and Capital and Labor 
on the other, when the enterpriser is not at peace 



§ 1 19] Personal Property. loy 

with capital by owning most of it himself, 
wiste timlanT°* But it is the cheapest sort of nonsense to 

strength in gnnding claim that in our day men of hi2:h ability 
labor or capiial. ^ ,. . . . -^ ^ . , & _ "-^^-lj-luj 

waste tneir time m trying to grind the 
face of either capital or labor : able heads are apt to 
be too full of making money, to bother themselves 
much with petty means of saving it. The pettifogging 
is carried on by a lower type of man ; altho the wisest 
men make mistakes, and all men, rich as well as poor, 
and poor as well as rich, see their own side too exclu- 
sively. 

118. Canital and , ^^ ^^ °^^^^ supposed that if the laborers 
labor powerless thcmselves owned the factory, or the store 
without Ability. Q^ ^j^g steamboat, and all in them, they 
could then get along without the Man of Ability. But 
in the first place, they very seldom do own the estab- 
lishment; and where, by saving up and putting their 
money together, they have owned it, they have always 
failed, unless the born Man of Ability arose among 
them. Then the born Man of Ability has generally in 
time got his share of the product, and until very lately 
(126), he has generally ended as the owner of the con- 
cern. 

And he has not stolen it : without him, the thing has 
generally soon been shut up. But where he has taken 
hold, he has enabled the men to produce enough to 
pay their wages, and sometimes more; and what was 
over, was of course fairly his own production. 

Outside of a few cooperative establish- 
division! ""^^^^ °^ ments carried on by very exceptional work- 
ingmen, men without a manager have not 
produced enough to pay their wages. It seems to fol- 
low, then, that when an exceptional establishment does 
pay, the production above ordinary wages, is pre- 
sumably the manager's. Karl Marx and his school 
say that the manager gets this production and more 
too. The modern school says that he gets less. Mal- 
lock says that the workmen produce five thirteenths of 
the output, and get paid for seven thirteenths. Sound 
economists agree with his general position, tho he alone 



io8 The Protection of Rights. [§119 

is responsible for his figures. But this does not mean 
that if the enterpriser gets six thirteenths of what is 
produced — that if every day he were paying seven 
hundred rnen three dollars apiece, he would get eighteen 
hundred dollars a day to each man's three dollars. It 
means that the six thirteenths have to pay not only 
profits, but taxes, insurance, rent, interest on borrowed 
capital, and dividends to stockholders, if there are any. 

120. Enterprisers ^^ ^ matter of fact, what the enterpriser 
generally_ get less generally gets out of the six thirteenths, is 
than nothing. something less than nothing at all — he gen- 
erally uses up all the money that has been put in the 
business, and fails (loi). The wage-earners get their 
share first, and next the other claimants — landlord, sup- 
pliers of machinery, fuel, raw material and merchandise, 
and lenders of money — get what they can, and if there 
is anything left (which in most cases there is not), the 
enterpriser gets it. 

But to the casual observer of the business world, all 
this will read like nonsense. He will naturally ask: If 
the money embarked in business is generally lost — if 
ninety-nine enterprisers in a hundred lack the ability 
to succeed, how can large industries be carried on at 
all? They are carried on by the one man in a hundred, 
or the one in a thousand. Until an enterpriser has 
proved himself, people will not trust him with much 
capital. So before much is lost by incapable managers, 
they fail — competition weeds them out and returns them 
to the ranks, while the capable ones survive to conduct 
the large industries. 

121. Handworkers ^^ have Spoken SO far mainly of Ability 
of special Ability, ^g guiding mechanics or others who 
handle material things. Let us stop a moment to con- 
sider other men of ability who work with their muscles. 
Artists, musicians, pubhc performers of all kinds, work 
with their muscles, and sometimes those of great Ability 
make thousands of dollars an hour. ''Goods" are not 
all of them mere material things: art, literature and 
science are among the highest goods, and people pay high 
for them, when of best quality, whether in music, books, 



§ 123] Personal Property. 109 

pictures, statues and beautiful houses, or fees to doctors, 
lawyers and engineers. 

122. Property not Property, then, is not only in tangible 
all tangible. things : some of the most valuable proper- 
ties are in mere rights, such as the rights to make and 
sell patented inventions and (tho seldom of equal value) 
copyrighted books, music and pictures. Some other 
examples of mere rights that have a money value, are 
that at the great fairs, the rights to keep restaurants, 
rent out rolling chairs, sell papers, candy, and even 
peanuts, are sold for large sums. So often are rights 
to put down railways, even before a tool has been used 
in the work. 

Of course, to exercise ability and reap its rewards, a 
man need not necessarily either guide hands, his own 
or others', in producing or handling material things. 
Not to speak of inventors, the lawyers and statesmen 
regulate productive industry, and so add to production. 
We might liken the world to steam machinery. The 
steam-power — the engine, is labor; machines — like looms 
and cotton-gins, are the ability that makes the power 
useful ; and the lawyers and statesmen are the governors 
and fly-wheels. So far as they see that justice is done, 
that taxes are wise and government good, they keep 
things running easily and smoothly — the power from 
being wasted, and the machines from going too slow, or 
so fast as to tear themselves to pieces. 
.00 r r There seems to be a general impression, 

123. Comoarative ,,.,. -, i,ri .1,1 • 

Drofits indifferent Dut it IS a douDtiul One, that busmess men 
fields of Ability. ^^ ability— who control material things, 

are as a rule richer than the surgeons, and artists, and 
lawyers, and statesmen. It is certainly doubtful 
whether they are, in proportion to their numbers ; many 
doctors and lawyers are rich, but there are a great many 
more men in business, and therefore a great many more 
rich ones, and of the comparatively few men in the 
fine arts and the other professions, by no means all 
have much ability, any more than have men in business. 
Whether as a question of causes, or as one of natural 
justice, there are certainly few questions more interest- 



no The Protection of Rights. [§124 

ing than why a few men have most all the ability, and 
therefore most all the property, while 

have ^-eat AbiliTy- ^^^^ men have very little of either; and 
it is but a superficial answer to say that it 
is probably for the same reason that a few horses have 
all the speed and beauty : for we do not know the answer 
much better regarding the horses than regarding the 
men. The causes are all a question of evolution, not 
very well worked out yet. 

The truths we have been considering about the shares 
of the various producers, have not long been understood. 

ioc n- ^ The bottom ones were first clearly stated 

125. Discovery ot . ^ , ttt n , ii-r\ i-, • 1-1^ ,, 
the foregoing m General Walker s Political i^conomy, 

*''"^^^' in 1874, and since then they have been 

followed up and expanded, particularly by Professor 

Marshall and Mr. Mallock. It used to be believed that 

what the enterpriser got, he got by having control of 

the tools and materials, the store, the railroad, the 

steamboat, and forcing his men to let him keep a part 

of what they really produced or exchanged. 

126. Ability '^^^^ Man of Ability is certainly appear- 
increasing. ing oftener than he used to. A new state 
of affairs is growing up in England. At last workmen 
are putting their money together and enterprising their 
own industries, and are rapidly developing so much 
ability that they can manage themselves through direct- 
ors elected by themselves. Of course they cannot all 
be bosses, but they are capable of directing sufficiently 
to prevent having to depend entirely on any one or 
two men; and the rank and file are developing sense 
enough to help their leaders instead of hindering them, 
as has been too often the case before. 

127. Suum That men who are mere machines — who 
cuique. (Jo not economize production, have any 
just title to profits from economized production — that 
men who take no part in organization, have any just 
claim in the profits from organization, are both prop- 
ositions which, however desirable the advance of such 
men's lots may be, are too absurd to promote such an 
advance, or any other good thing. But such descrip- 



§128] Personal Property. iii 

tions of limited function do not apply accurately to 
many men, and ought not to apply to any. As already 
intimated, there is ability in varying amount, among 
men who are directed by larger ability; and the ability 
of men under direction can" be stimulated and increased. 
Moreover, it is plain that ability, little or big, should 
have its little or big share of profits. 
.00 M- ■ A rouph and limited justice in this re- 

128. Minimum ^ . ^. ^ 111 

wage and slid- gard IS already reached by wages varymg 
ingscaie. somewhat with the productiveness of em- 

ployees, but the justice is very rough and very limited. 
Various schemes have been tried to improve it. Among 
them have been sliding scales of wages, varying with 
the profits of the business. A minimum wage (272 d, 
276) is of course a necessary feature of this: for the men 
cannot be expected to have any reserves to fall back 
upon if the business pays no profits, and moreover, in 
many such cases, they go on producing in their way, 
and are entitled to their production. If the enter- 
priser cannot make money out of it, that is his risk — 
a risk he often takes for the sake of his men, when, in 
a sense, it is no risk at all, but a dead certainty against 
him. Nevertheless, in average cases, an enterpriser 
sets his men to making product, from the expectation 
that he will make a profit on it, and there can be no 
question that so far as labor goes into that product, 
the product belongs to labor, and labor is entitled to 
the value from it which was commuted as wages. Hence 
a minimtim wage, with an advance varying with profits, 
is a clearly logical scheme, at least so far as concerns 
the minimum. As concerns the advance, it is logical 
so far as profits are contributed to by advanced energy, 
carefulness and economy on the part of the workmen; 
but it is not logical so far — and that is the main dis- 
tance — as the profits depend upon initiative, organizing 
ability, prophetic sense, study of the market, and finan- 
ciering ability — air en the part of the employer. As soon 
as a workman shows any appreciable amount of these 
rare elements of ability, the question of a sliding scale 
of- wages will have brief interest for him : his employers 



112 The Protection of Rights. [§ 128 

will be only too glad to use him in some higher place 
where such questions do not arise, or he will himself 
be able to put himself there. It would appear, then, 
that the portion of profits which can reasonably be 
devoted to a rising scale of wages, beyond the amount 
to which the wage-earner is entitled anyhow, cannot 
be a very large one. 

129. No lack of ^^ "^^e various schemes for making the 

opportunity, whole establishment a vast partnership, it 

will not do to lose sight of the same principles. As 
the man of ability is a rare product of Nature, and 
as any considerable business is fated, to destruction 
without him, and as he mtist provide his weaker 
brethren with their wages, and bear whatever losses 
may arise in so doing, whatever profits come out 
of the concern (and as said before, comparatively few 
men who essay the task, bring out any) are logically 
his, except in the small degree that his men may be 
able to contribute his kind of virtues. The difiiculty 
of their contributing them is not only in the rarity 
of such virtues, but in some small degree, as business is 
inevitably organized, in opportunity. But how rela- 
tively small that lack of opportunity is, can be realized 
only by those who, like the writer of these lines, have 
been for many years anxiously watching among a group 
of subordinates for the slightest gleam of business 
capacity, and on finding it, in one man in scores, eagerly 
setting it to fitting work; and this at least as much 
from selfish motives as from desire to give another his 
due chance. 

The minimum wage and the small share in profits 
(and none in losses) being then the best present chance 
of the man who lacks the ability to rise beyond wage- 
earning, and that chance being distributed with an 
approach to uniformity that but very roughly recog- 
nizes differences in capacity, what can be done to give 
the wage-earner a better chance? Whatever can be 

done, he will do most of himself. Gen- 
to e'mbrace^it.^^'^ erally he will do nothing beyond furnishing 

an equivalent, more or less adequate, for 



§131] Personal Property. 113 

his wages, and will finish his life as he began it. As 
the world is now organized, sometimes he will show 
enough ability to attract the attention of his superiors, 
and will be welcomed to such higher functions in the 
establishment as he is able to perform — perhaps its 
headship. Sometimes he will save his money, and 
start a little industry of his own. In this he will gen- 
erally fail, and revert to the ranks. In rare cases he 
will succeed, and furnish opportunities to make a living 
to some who cannot make opportunities for them- 
selves. In rarer cases, he will furnish enough such 
opportunities, and exercise enough capacity in shaping 
and handling the results, as to make himself rich, 
whereupon all those for whom he has provided the 
opportunities, will say that he has got rich by robbing 
them. Or finally, by becoming a cooperator, our wage- 
earner may get the benefit of whatever ability may be 
in him, and may rise without incurring jealousy. But 
success in producing has so far attended very few 
cooperative experiments before they had ceased to be 
cooperative, and had come under the ownership of 
men of ability. Yet more men of ability appear to 
be developing from the ranks, and the ability of the 
ranks themselves seems increasing. 

As to the question of natural justice already alluded 
to — does it seem right that because one man is born 

very able, and another, who may be a 
offortunTnght?^ better man at heart, is not very able, the 

first should be prosperous, and the second 
poor? That depends upon what we mean by "right", 
and that again depends upon what we are using the 
word for. If we are using it for our hands, the right 
hand is the one most people can use best ; if we are talk- 
ing about a right line, it means one that goes direct 
from point to point; if a clergyman speaks of a right 
action, he means such a one as his church would approve ; 
a lawyer means by a right, something that the govern- 
ment, or the law, will or should secure to a man; and a, 
philosopher would mean, an act for the greatest good 
of the greatest number, or he might mean an act in 



114 ^^<^ Protection of Rights. .. [§131 

accord v/ith Nature's laws. The fortunes of Peabody, 
Cooper, Vanderbilt and Stewart are certainly in accord 
with Nature's laws, and therefore in this sense must be 
' ' right " . As to the greatest good of the greatest 
number, probably few would question regarding Pea- 
body's and Cooper's; and certainly Vanderbilt's and 
Stewart's resulted from work which "the greatest 
number" could well afford to pay the fortunes for, if 
they had had to. But they did not have to: for, as 
we have seen, the fortunes would not have existed but 
for the savings effected for the community, part of 
which savings made the fortunes of the enterprisers. 

Admitting, then, that wealth honestly acquired is 
right, especially when used as Peabody and Cooper used 
theirs, is the corresponding poverty right too? 

Well, if "corresponding poverty" means that the 
majority of mankind is poor because the minority is 
rich, there is no "corresponding poverty": men of 
ability while making their own fortunes, imiprove those 
of their employees and of the whole community, in- 
stead of diminishing them.. 

We often find things in accord with Nature's laws 
that seem not for the greatest good of the greatest 
number, but even to our finite vision, investigation 
generally shows that they only seem so. 
132. Evils have True, Nature is a hard mother to the 

their uses. ineffective man. She starves him, freezes 

him, often kills him, unless the effective man guides 
him or saves him by charity. She fills the world with 
beauty and opportunity; but so far, she has evolved 
few who care for the beauty, and fewer still who can 
seize the opportunity. Harder still, perhaps, she even 
takes away from the ineffective man most of anything 
he may have, and passes it around, unless it is wasted, 
until it reaches the hands of the effective man. Truer 
words were never spoken than: "Unto every one that 
hath, shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but 
from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that 
which he hath." 

And yet Nature, by her very hardness, through forcing 



§132] Personal Property. 115 

her children to help themselves and depend for help 
on each other, has evolved from the ineffective merci- 
less savage, the effective sympathetic man ; and through 
him she is indirectly showing to her less favored children 
the mercy that she does not show directly. 

Poverty and disease exist only because Nature (in- 
cluding the man she has evolved) has not yet worked 
entirely beyond them. Nevertheless, great numbers of 
people have vowed not to help in the improvement, but 
to be poor all their lives, because they thought it for 
their own good, and for the good of their fellow men; 
and some of them have even gone so far as to try to 
make themselves sick by fasting and vigils. We can 
hardly assume that there was not any truth whatever 
in their ideas. But good people often do very foolish 
things because they get too enthusiastic over one part 
of the truth. The part here is that poverty and sick- 
ness, being natural, must have some good resulting from 
them, but the good is in overcoming them, not in seek- 
ing them, as the ascetics used to. Some of the noblest 
efforts and wisest discoveries and greatest advances of 
the race have been made in overcoming poverty and 
sickness. In fact, the history of civilization has been 
an overcoming of disadvantages. Most of the intelli- 
gence and morality of mankind have grown up through 
conquering the hard conditions of Nature. All early 
men were savages, man has become civilized only 
through the conquests he has made. Through over- 
coming Nature's difficulties, he has become brave and 
strong; through hard study of her secrets, he has 
become wise; and through helping others who would 
not have needed help if there were no poverty or sick- 
ness, he has become benevolent. 

Poverty and sickness, then, do tend to develop use- 
fulness, tho most modern men prefer to have their 
usefulness arise from different experiences, even at the 
cost of disagreeing with the early saints. 



CHAPTER IX. 



PROPERTY AS CAPITAL. 



The sources of property rights we have so far consid- 
ered, are Land (including, of course, its rent), the wages 
of ordinary Labor, and the profits of AbiHty. 

That government should protect all those property 
rights — in rent, wages and profits, is a matter-of-course 
too simple to discuss. 

Equally of course, that governm.ent 
tftfed toTovem"-' should protect any one honest dollar of 
as^wa%s'"°^^^^'°" rent, wages or profits more than any other 
honest one, would be absurd. If a laborer 
does not use up all his wages, that it should be govern- 
ment's duty to protect his rights in only the portion 
which he uses up, would be an idea twice as absurd as 
the other. And yet many people unconsciously enter- 
tain that idea. Of course if government should protect 
a man's enjoyment of his wages, it should protect his 
enjoyment of his savings. 

If, instead of wasting his surplus wages in expensive 
food or drink, or unnecessarily fine clothes, he sees fit 
to save them and add to the permanent wealth of the 
community in the shape of, say, an addition to his 
house, or to add to the amount of cultivated land by a 
garden, it is plainly government's duty to protect his 
rights in them. To support the contrary would be even 
more ridiculous than to support either of the previous 
suppositions. 

If then, instead of enjoying his savings himself by, 
say, adding to his house or garden, he sees fit to provide 

ii6 



§ 135] Property as Capital. 117 

employment for other laborers, say by building a little 
factory and stocking it with tools, to doubt that govern- 
ment should equally protect his rights in that, would be 
the most ridiculous of all. 

Supposing, then, that instead of stopping at saving 
enough to build a little factory, he were in time to save 
enough to build a big one, or even a railroad, it is self- 
evident that government should protect his rights in that 
too. To question it would be to say that government 
should protect a man while he is being of comparatively 
moderate usefulness, but should desert him as soon as 
he begins to be of great usefulness. 

Now we have just been going over the ground through 
which most rich men have become rich. The men who 
are constantly grumbling that the "poor man stands no 
chance ' ' keep their eyes tight shut to the plain fact that 
the vast majority of rich men started poor, and got rich 
by the ways we have been describing. Not one in ten 
of them inherited his money, and when he did, his 
father generally began poor, and got it in the ways 
described. 

Yet they seldom saved all they made use 
134. A man who of. As soon as a man shows that he has 
can fifreTt"^^ the ability to make, save and use a little 
money, other people who have saved are 
glad to lend him more. Money seeks just such invest- 
ments. 

Money thus saved, and employed in the instruments of 
production, is called Capital. 

The usual forms of capital are land — 
consisfs^fn. ^^'''^^' where used for a farm, mine, factory, store, 
railroad, or anything else that produces 
or saves wealth; all tools used in production — includ- 
ing machinery, vehicles and animals ; all stocks of goods 
for sale ; and all wages and other expenses to keep the 
industry going before the product is sold. 

We first named the essentials of modern industry 
as Labor, Ability and Land. But as we have gone on, 
we have indicated many things besides land — such as 



ii8 The Protection of Rights. [I ^2>S 

buildings, raw material and machinery, as equally 
essential. Yet altho those things eventually depend on 
the land, it is much handier to group it with them 
under the name of Capital. 

If capital is in land, it gets its returns in Rent. Even 

if a man works his land himself, what he gets more than 

the equivalent of wages, can fairly be called rent. If 

an enterpriser hires tools, what he pays for 

' ^" ' them is often called rent. If instead of 

hiring tools or land, he goes to a man whose savings are 
in money, and hires that, in order that he may buy 
land and tools to give workmen employment, the name 
given to what he pays for the use of the money depends 
upon whether he turns over a share of his profits, 
whatever they may be, or pays a fixed price. 

If he pays a fixed amount for each dollar 

' " ^""^^ ' and each day's use of it, he pays interest. 

There is no reason why, if a man keeps his savings 
ready to hire to others in the shape of money, he should 
not get paid for the use of them, just as he is paid for 
the use of them if he puts them into land or tools. To 
deny a man's right to interest on his m.oney is as absurd 
as to deny his right to rent for his land, or hire for his 
horse or boat or tools. Yet the world long held the 
opposite opinion. But the world has had to outgrow a 
great many foolish opinions, and will have to outgrow 
a great many more. 

In the good old times when people were 

■ ^"'*^' even more foolish than they are now, all 

interest on money v/as called usury, and the taking of 
usury was considered wrong, and it sometimes is still. 
But only interest above the legal rate is called usury 
now, and there is not even a legal rate everywhere. 

In some places people can agree on what rate they 
please, but the law generally provides a rate that shall 
apply to a debt in dispute or otherwise delayed, until it 
is settled. Yet in places where the law fixes a rate which 
L ws ^^^ never legally be exceeded, such laws 
against it are not generally observed. They are 

"^^'^^^' simply ridiculous survivals of the old 



§ 138 ^] Property as Capital. 119 

superstitions that prevailed before people knew much 
about money. 

About the end of the nineteenth century, public 
opinion in New York had grown sufficiently enlightened 
for the passage of the following law regarding Interest. 
It leaves many, perhaps most, of the large transactions 
subject to the law of supply and demand, while it con- 
tinues the alleged but illusive paternal policy of pro- 
tecting the man not up to large transactions. 

"The legal rate is six per cent. A corporation cannot plead 
usury as a defence. The taking or agreeing to take any greater 
sum renders the contract or obhgation void, except in bottomry 
and respondentia bonds and contracts. For advance of money 
of not less than five thousand dollars, payable on demand, 
made upon warehouse receipts, bills of lading, certificates of 
stock and of deposits, bills of exchange, bonds, or other nego- 
tiable instruments, pledged as collateral security for such re- 
payment, it shall be lawful to receive or to contract to receive 
and collect, as compensation for making such advances, any 
sum to be agreed upon in writing by the parties to such trans- 
action." 

Tho the legal rate in New York is six per cent., the 
actual rate in Wall Street is generally from two to four 
per cent., but sometimes, for a short pinch, from one 
hundred to two hundred per cent. The law, in New 
York for instance, (except as modified above,) nominally 
punishes taking more than the legal rate, by canceling 
the debt; but practically does not punish at all. The 
most law-abiding citizens do not call upon the law, 
though it v/ould enable them to get rid of their debts: 
for if anybody did, he would not have to pay back the 
money borrowed. But a man's promise to pay is a 
more sacred thing than a worn-out law, and a man who 
acted to the contrary would find it hard to borrow the 
next time he might be in need. 

A large part of the world has already acted more 
freely than New York upon these opinions about the 
138 r6;.D/sappea.- absurdity of usury laws. In England 
ing from eniight- there has uot been a usury law for over 

ened communities. .1 • j. j • 

thirty years, and m our more progressive 
states, people can contract for any rate they please, 



I20 The Protection of Rights. [§ 138 ^ 

without collateral, tlio a legal rate is always provided 
in case money lying in dispute is ultimately' recovered. 

The useless and ridiculous law is kept on some of our 
statute-books, however, because the majority of voters 
are too stupid to get trusted with much money, or know 
much about money, and they have an idea that a legal 
rate of interest enables them, if they can borrow at all, 
to borrow lower than they otherwise could. 

The fact is quite the reverse : they gen- 
^b^riower^'^'^ ^" ©rally havc to pay more than the market 
rate, in order to compensate the lender for 
the risk of their appealing to the law to release them from 
paying back. The best opinion now is that usury laws 
are a disadvantage to everybody, and to the poor man 
most of all. The poor man nearly always has to pay 
the legal rate, while the rich man may not be paying 
a quarter as much; and when the man in good credit 
can get all he wants at the legal rate or below, it is 
generally impossible for even the deserving poor man 
to get it below the legal rate, and often impossible for him 
to borrow at all. If there were no usury laws, he would 
generally be able to get money at somewhere near the 
market price. 

Yet in backward and ignorant countries, clever 
usurers sometimes despoil the stupid people frightfully. 
Such people might be better off if paternal governmients 
would give them usury laws. But a people professing 
(rightly or wrongly) the ability to govern themselves, 
should in consistency profess to be able to make their 
own contracts. 

.09 M A f Now let us take up a new phase of 

associating capital. We have seen (100, 103) that for 

^^P'^^'" the community to get the benefit of 

"the great industry" through cheapened product, it is 
necessary to do things on a very large scale, and there 
are some things that it is not worth while to do at all 
unless they are done on a very large scale — railroads 
and steamships, for instance. If each man in the civi- 
lized world who is rich enough, were to build a railroad 



§ I40 a] Property as Capital. 121 

or a steamship or a great factory or some other great 
convenience, there are probably not half enough rich 
men to give us all the railroads and steamships and 
similar great enterprises that are needed. Even if 
there were enough rich men, it would not be wise for 
one to put his whole fortune into making one or two 
such things : it is never wise to put all the eggs in one 
basket. In fact, there are some very important enter- 
prises, such as new inventions and mines and explora- 
tions, and other uncertain things, into which it is very 
unwise for anybody to put more than he can afford to 
lose. 

The capital is generally obtained for enterprises too 
large or too uncertain to be undertaken by one man, or 
by a partnership of two or three, by a great number 

,^„ , ,. of people — sometimes thousands, putting 

140. Incorporations. .i- ^ ,1 iij^- r 

their money together, and electing some 01 

their number to manage the enterprise. Judge Bald- 
win * says that probably four fifths of the business 
capital and of the industry of the country are now rep- 
resented in such associations. 

But, it may be asked: if a hundred men combine to 
do a business, how would anybody want to trust them, 
when to collect, say, a hundred dollars, he might have 
to sue a hundred men for a dollar apiece .f* The law 
has met this difficulty by providing that, under proper 
circumstances, a number of persons may be incorporated 
into one fictitious person called a Corporation, and that 
the corporation may be sued, or may sue, or do business 
in almost any way, just as if it were a single person. 
HQ (a). As affect- Morcovcr, if men go into business to- 
ing liability. gethcr as partners, no matter if each puts 

in only a tenth of what he has, any one of them can 
run the firm into debt so that all might have to pay 
out all that they have, and this while all are attending 
to the business themselves every day. Therefore, if 
an enterprise were proposed to be owned by a thousand 
partners whose interests do not average more than a 

* "Modern Political Problems." ■ 



122 The Protection of Rights. [§ 140 a 

thousand dollars apiece, apparently nobody would be 
foolish enough to take an interest, when any one of 
the thousand partners might run the concern into 
debt so as to use up the whole fortune of any of the 
others. Yet people have often been just that foolish. 
A very conspicuous case is that of the Glasgow Bank 
which failed in the seventies: partners who were not 
interested more than a hundred or two dollars — some 
of them women and old people and children, were de- 
prived of that and of all their other means of support, 
to pay the bank's debts. 

After such experiences, people take the risk of these 
big enterprises only because laws have been made that 
the members of corporations observing certain rules to 
protect the public against bad management, shall not 
be liable for the debts of the corporations beyond the 
amounts they have invested. 

140 eft;. Perpetu- In a partnership, if a partner dies, the 
^^y- partnership usually comes to an end ; and 

(unless careful arrangements have been made to the 
contrary) the business must be sold, even if it is bought 
in by the other partners and the family of the deceased. 
But if there are a thousand people in a corporation, 
it is not necessary to sell the whole thing out whenever 
any one of them dies. The law provides that corpora- 
tions shall not come to an end when one of the con- 
tributors dies, but that his share shall go on, without 
being entirely separated from the rest, to those who 
inherit from him. 

140 (c). Stocks When there are numbers of subscribers, 

and bonds, i]^q shares are kept track of by entering 

all the subscriptions in a book, and issuing for them 
numbered certificates, called shares of stock, generally 
one share for each hundred dollars subscribed. 

Preferred stock is a separate portion of the total 
stock, which shall be entitled to a certain amount of the 
divided profits (dividends) before any are paid on 
the remaining, or "common", stock. Sometimes the 
dividends on preferred stock are "cumulative" — that 
is : before any dividends can be paid on common stock, 



§i4oc] Property as Capital. 123 

payment must be made for any deficiencies of previous 
years below the rate prescribed for the preferred stock. 

When a corporation wishes to borrow for a con- 
siderable time, it generally executes a mortgage (83) 
to some one party, who sells out the claim secured by 
the mortgage, in portions generally varying from fifty 
dollars to one thousand dollars, according to circum- 
stances. These portions are expressed in documents 
under seal (82 d) which are called bonds (83 a), and are 
sold to anybody who wants them. Many of ours have 
been bought by Europeans: in other words, the Euro- 
peans have lent us a great deal of money. 

The chief differences between stocks and bonds are: 
(I) a certificate of stock declares that the holder is part 
owner of property, while a bond declares that the holder 
owns a claim against a property, which claim is fixed in 
amount, and must be satisfied before the owners of the 
property can benefit from the property; (II) bonds 
have a steadier value than stocks. A piece of property 
need not pay more than a hundred cents on the dollar 
upon any bonds it may be liable for, and it must pay 
that much if it can, and it generally can: for people are 
not apt to take bonds on a piece of property for more 
than a part of what it is worth. But if it turns out to 
be worth barely the amount of its bonds, the stock- 
holders get nothing. On the other hand, if an enter- 
prise is enormously successful, the bondholders get 
only the amount of their bonds, and the stockholders 
get all the rest. 

Stocks and bonds are both, in effect, claims against 
property, either real or personal, tho the law regards 
both the stocks and bonds themselves as personal prop- 
erty. 

People sell stocks and bonds just as they do any 
other value, and the places where those of the most 
prominent companies are bought and sold are called 
stock-exchanges. 

The prices of stocks at the exchanges become guides 
in settling many civic questions. When business is 
expected to be good, the prices of stocks are high, 



124 The Protection of Rights. [§ 140c 

because the enterprises they represent are expected 
to divide good profits — pay good dividends. Therefore 
when a great question hke a pohtical campaign or a 
war is before the people, the prospects of one side or 
the other will affect the price of stocks. So when a 
rise in stocks generally attends the good prospects of one 
side, that must be the side which makes for safety of 
property, activity of business, and high wages. 

But by no means all the stocks and bonds of cor- 
porations are dealt in at the stock-exchanges. Only 
those which the managers of the exchanges think of 
enough importance — probably not one in ten thousand — 
are put on their lists. 

The small corporations are unfavorably affecting the 
craving for land that some philosophers think the wisest 
of all economic desires. Laborers are not trying to own 
their own homes as they used to, but are putting their 
savings more into all sorts of incorporated enterprises. 

To sum up : the principal benefits conferred on the 
community by corporations, are that they make it 
possible to cheapen product by the fullest develop- 
ment of " the great industry ", to carry on enterprises too 
great or too uncertain for private capital, and to secure 
interests in business for the benefit of the owners' heirs. 

Another advantage is that their stocks and bonds 
are often good investments. Yet while many are, 
many more, perhaps, are not. The bonds of the suc- 
cessful ones are very convenient investments for people 
who have a little more money than they want to put 
in a savings-bank, but have not money enough to buy 
a piece of land worth taking care* of, or a mortgage 
on one. Those sold on the exchanges are also good in- 
vestments for funds that the owner may want to use 
at short notice, which is a consideration of vastly more 
importance than is generally realized. Sometimes even 
rich men get into trouble because their wealth is in prop- 
erty that cannot readily be sold. 

... , There never was a greater mistake than 

por'ations not all the very current one that the bonds and 
owned by the rich, ^^^^j^^ ^^ ^^^ corporations are all owned 



§ 143] Property as Capital. 125 

by rich people. The general course of the money of 
people of moderate means, unless they have it invested 
in their own homes and shops, or building and loan 
associations, is something like this: a great deal of 
it goes directly into the bonds or stocks of corpora- 
tions, and much goes into the savings-banks; the sav- 
ings-banks gather up the little deposits and lend them 
out in large amounts, sometimes on the bonds of cor- 
porations, but generally on mortgages on land; and the 
sums thus borrowed are very largely invested by the 
rich in the corporate enterprises which they organize. 
So the fact is that, at bottom, the corporations are really 
largely owned by people of very moderate means — 
especially by widows and orphans who cannot go into 
business or manage real estate. 

iAo \ ' So much for the advantages of corpora- 

142, Irresponsi- . ^ , . ^ ^ ^ f. ^ 

biiity of corpora- tions ; now there are elements 01 disad- 
*'°"^' vantage. The chief one is that, as the 

liability of shareholders is limited, and as, in the large 
corporations, it is an impossibility for many shareholders 
to keep close oversight, there is great danger of reckless 
and selfish management. This danger also weakens the 
credit of the smaller corporations. 

143 Ver small There are too many unimportant little 

corporations unde- corporations, not Only because of the 
^""^ advantages over partnership already ex- 

plained, but also because some time ago people thought it 
made a business look big to call it a company. But that 
has been overdone: the financial irresponsibility of 
the very small corporations generally makes them a 
nuisance; especially as many are started for the ex- 
press purpose of defrauding by the pretentious name of 
a "company", and without personal liability beyond 
the stock owned. The privilege of incorporation 
should not be given below a considerable amount of 
capital. The evil might be apt to correct itself, 
however, through the growing unwillingness of people 
to trust them, if the gull-crop did not seem inex- 
haustible. 



126 The Protection of Rights. [§ 144 

t44. Why Labor Labor generally regards corporations 

hates corporations, with extreme disfavor. As corporations 
do not die, and generally consist of so many people 
that they are very unlike a single human being, it 
has become a proverb that "corporations have no 
souls ". Moreover, as corporations run most of the 
very large industries, they are always most prominent 
in the great labor struggles, and therefore many people 
have come to dislike them, a.nd the tendency is to tax 
them unduly. Another reason why they are over- 
taxed is that in order to limit their liability, they have 
to publish some of their accounts, so that people will 
knoY/ how far to trust them; and the tax-collectors 
are thus better able, as they are generally disposed, to 
tax them for all they are worth. They cannot do this 
as readily to private concerns that do not have to pub- 
lish their affairs. 

This unfriendly attitude toward corporations, is to 
be deplored when it extends to corporations con- 
ducted fairly: and those large enough to cheapen pro- 
duction through "the great industry" generally are. 
So far as they are unjustly interfered with, their ability 
to cheapen things is impaired. 

145. Danger of There is danger in their being very 

MonopolY. large, because they are apt to become so 

great as to run into monopolies. The word monopoly 
comes from tv/o Greek words meaning "one" and "to 
sell", and it means anything which has only one owner 
to sell. He of course can ask what he pleases, and so 
long as people will buy, his price is not limited at all 
by the cost of production. 

Until Parliament passed the statute against monopo- 
lies in 1624, they had been largely given to royal 
favorites. American courts have always held them 
illegal except for franchises for the public benefit, which 
can fairly be considered to include patents and copy- 
rights, and both of these are specially sanctioned by the 
Constitution of the United States. 



' CHAPTER X. 

COMPETITION, MONOPOLY AND INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 

TRUSTS. 

146. Rio-htsof "^^f objection to a monopoly is that it 

and'to competi- deprives the public of its rights to Com- 
*'°"' petition. 

There are two principal rights regarding competition. 
They might be called the right of Competition, and the 
right to Competition. Each individual has the right of 
competition — the right of competing with other indi- 
viduals; and the community has the right to competi- 
tion — to the reasonable prices and improved qualities 
of goods and service that competition brings. 

The right of individuals to compete, is not a right that 
all are eager to claim. Lazy people do not want to com- 
pete, or rather do not want to have anybody 
lazyantitupid.*^' compete with them; they hate the very 
name of competition, and want the state 
to try to abolish it, because it forces them to work 
harder; and incapable people hate it because it drives 
them to the wall. Yet if they were wise enough to look 
at the question as consumers, they would see the whole 
active and able world competing to make things better 
and cheaper and more various for them. 

To illustrate the benefits of competition, suppose that, 
in a primitive community, milk is taken around in goat- 
skin bags. If somebody comes along with 
tfa^tech"""^*' '""'" a tin can, everybody will get milk from him 
[tJenfcTot'' "^^^^^ ^^^ °^^^^ dealers get tin cans. Then, 
suppose somebody else brings it nicely 
measured in bottles with spring stoppers, instead of 

127 



128 The Protection of Rights. [§ 148 a 

slopping it into each customer's pitcher amid the dust 
and heat of the street ; pretty soon everybody will take 
from the bottle man until all dealers supply bottles. 
In this way competition will have supplied the com- 
munity with good milk in neat bottles, instead of milk 
apt to sour, from goat-skin bags. But if the early dealer 
had kept a monopoly, the people would still be getting 
it from goat-skins. To carry the illustration a step 
farther: in some parts of the country, the milkman 
sits in his cart and yells or rings a bell, for the customer 
to come out to him; in the other regions, where compe- 
tition is lively, he jumps out himself and carries the 
milk in. 

To illustrate competition in means of 

148 (b). In travel. ^ ^ .-l. ■ 4-t, • i 

travel: there, as m everything else, new 
methods are constantly driving out old. The railway 
competed with the turnpike road; steam, the cable car, 
the trolley and the automobile are competing with the 
horse; and the bicycle competes with mere walking. 
148 (c). In com- Perhaps the greatest revolution effected 

mereiaitmveiing. ]^j competition in rcccut timcs, is the 
system of commercial traveling. A generation ago 
every considerable dealer outside of the great cities 
had to go to them at least once or twice a year to find 
out what was going on in his line, and to buy a large 
stock of goods ; now nearly everything is brought to him 
by samples. Moreover, as the travelers are constantly 
coming to him, he need not carry nearly as large a stock 
of any particular thing, and can therefore have a 
variety vastly greater and much fresher, and up to the 
latest improvements. Farther: in old times when the 
country merchants went to the cities on their regular 
buying expeditions, they were very apt to get led astray, 
and leave a good deal of money that they brought home 
nothing to show for. Under the new system, if they 
go to the cities as often as they did before, they certainly 
do not stay as long at a time. 

The army of commercial travelers with which com- 
petition has crowded the country, costs a great deal 
more than the old system of dealers going to the cities. 



§148^] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trusts. 129 

But it costs not nearly as much in proportion to the 
amount of goods exchanged : the risk of unsalable stock 
is so much lessened, and the chance of getting the best 
and freshest thing for the money is so much increased. 
And all this has made it possible to supply more things 
and newer kinds of things for the same money. That 
has made new manufacturing industries possible, and 
increased the demand for labor, and the supply of con- 
veniences, in very many ways. 

In addition to the more direct benefits of this system 
of competition, commercial travelers have improved 
traveling facilities in general. They enable the rail- 
roads to give better and wider service than they other- 
wise could, and they have also led to a great improve- 
ment in the country hotels. After the stage-coaches 
went out, and before the commercial travelers came in, 
the country hotels got into a very bad way. 

Competition greatly promotes the steadi- 
tfon if prices"''^' HGSS of busiucss. It rcgulatcs prices, and 
through Demand makcs their risc and fall so gradual that 

and Supply. ^ • r 

people can make some preparation lor 
either : when goods begin to be abundant, sellers 
begin to compete by lowering prices; and when goods 
are becoming scarce, buyers begin to compete by 
offering higher prices. To put it in more scientific 
terms: prices are regulated by demand and supply. 
Prices are steady when the demand for goods or labor 
is just equal to keeping them in use at the prices asked. 
That equality is technically called the Equation of 
Demand and Supply. When the equation is disturbed 
by increase of supply, competition in lowering prices 
increases demand until demand and supply are again 
equal. When the equation is disturbed by increased 
demand, competition bids up prices and chokes off 
demand until demand and supply are equal. 
HS(e). Minor, That ''Competition is the life of trade", 

exceptions. jg ^^^ qI^ provcrb : it is of great benefit in 

keeping business active, and men at work. 

Yet it may not be quite fair to say that rise in prices 
is always started by the demand of competing buyers. 



130 The Protection of Rights. [§148^ 

It always is in the great auction exchanges for stocks, 
produce and real estate, where probably most of the 
world's business is done. Tho of course private dealers 
do not merely mark up prices of staples to follow the 
great exchanges, but mark them up also on other 
articles when they find their stocks running short. 

149. Evils in Every good thing can be carried to an 

competition. extreme, or used in a harmful way — in 

fact, some people think that all evil tendencies are 
merely good ones misused: accordingly, competition 
is sometimes harmful. It is often called harmful in 
driving out of business men who lack ability. But that 
is not harmful, even to the man him.self : if an unable 
,._, , o man tries to conduct business, he is 

149 (a). Suppress- . ' 

ing incapacity not always keeping his customcrs v/aitmg, 
among them. making mistakes, unable to furnish good 

goods, or any goods at moderate prices (except as his 
bankrupt stock ultimately gets into the bargain-stores) ; 
and he is under constant temptation to cover up his 
incapacity by dishonesty. His custom goes, of course, 
to more able men. Yet there ought to be a place in 
the world for a man whom Nature has not blessed with 
business ability: some of the best of men have lacked 
it. And there is a place for him under the guidance 
of the man who has ability; and the man without it 
is much better off there, than in stumbling along by 
himself, if he only has the sense to know it; and the 
community is vastly better off for his being there. 
149 r^;- Nor is The notion has arisen that competition 

poverty. jg ^ causc of povcrty, because every man 

who is not conducting business himself, and sees rich 
men conducting it, thinks that if he were condtict- 
ing business, he would be rich too. Every mechanic in 
the shop blames competition for preventing his being 
boss; whereas if he were, in the vast majority of cases, 
he would soon be bankrupt and poorer than he is, and 
the rest of the men thrown out of employment. The 
minority who are really able enough to be bosses, are 
not many of them prevented by competition from 



§ 151] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trttsts. 131 

becoming bosses. They generally do it in good time. 
149 re;. But waste- Yet competition is very often wasteful, 
fulness is. ^^-^^ 3^3 long as there are foolish men, it 

very often will be. But as to its driving a man out of 
business, that is not usually because of waste (unless 
it is his own waste), but because another man can make 
a profit by supplying the community at rates lower than 
the first man is able enough to. But nevertheless, there 
are plenty of instances of competition being carried to 
the point of Vv^aste on both sides — for instance, where 
advertising or drumming (both excellent things within 
limits) is carried to excess, or when a man has or thinks 
he has m.ore money than his competitor, and does 
business at a loss so as to get the other's customers 
away, expecting to make up his losses after his com- 
petitor is driven out of business. In this way, before- 
people learned better, the steamboats in the West and 
Southwest sometimes carried passengers for nothing, 
and even threw in their meals. True, the public got the 

150. Public seldom ^^^.^^^ ^^J^^ Competition, but only for 
gainer by wasteful a time. After One party was driven out, 
competition. ^^^ ^-^^ monopoly held by the other, the 

monopolist could put prices where he pleased. Such 
business is not really competition, but an effort to kill 
off competition. Legitimate competition is really 
economiical. 

But leaving out of consideration persons who are 
ruined by v/asteful competition, if the public has been 
accommodated at extra-low prices, they might be no 
worse off if for a time they have to pay extra-high ones, 
were it not that they must pay them long enough to 
make up for the Vv^aste, and pay a profit on it. More- 
over, unsteady prices unsettle business: nobody knov/s 
what to count on; and prices lower than they ought 
to be, get people into wasteful ways that do not stop 
when prices get normal again. 

151. Cooneration O^G is tempted to believe that the whole 
and competition. community would be vastly better off 
in wealth and peacefulness if competition could be re- 
placed by cooperation — if instead of all struggling 



132 The Protection of Rights. [§ ^S-c 

against each other, we were all helping each other. But 
on considering how it is to come about, one is, as usual 
when venturing very far beyond experience,' mired in a 
tangle of paradoxes. Competition consists largely in 
the lowering of prices. This, instead of proving com- 
petition a bane, shows it to be for the benefit of the 
public. But on the other hand, we have seen that as 
regards the competitors, competition is often attended 
with great waste in drumming, advertising and ruinously 
low prices. Suppose then that the men in a particular 
trade get together and agree that they could make more 
by helping each other than by fighting each other; and 
so make elaborate agreements to regulate prices and 
limit advertising and drumming, or combine all their 
businesses under the regulation of a few of the principals. 
This has been done in the trusts. But 
152. Capital trusts. Y\^hile, under them, the members of the 
trade get the benefit of cooperation, the 
public loses the benefit of competition. Here is our 
paradox: apparently we could benefit by helping 
each other, but as soon as we try it in the business 
world, somebody gets hurt. Yet it is true that with 
less ''human nature", the trusts could both lower 
prices and increase profits. Even as matters are, 
it is by no means certain that they do not. It is very 
certain that during the phenomenal advance of prices in 
America in the first half-dozen years of the twentieth 
century, oil, the most trust-guarded of all commodities, 
advanced among the least. But advances, whatever 
they may be, do not negative the fact that with less 
"human nature", trust-economized goods would be 
the cheapest, and would prove cooperation better than 
competition. So we can keep on hoping for a co- 
operative world, but it is destruction to try to realize 
it any faster than human nature makes the realization 
practicable. 

Mr. Bellamy expounded the notion of the benign 
trust in one commodity, into a benign trust in all, its 
functions to be conducted by the state. The benefits 
that he imagined from such a system were so great 



§ 152 a] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trusts. 133 

that he pictured the average family as Hving, instead 
of at the present average of six or seven hundred dol- 
lars a year, at an average of some thirty thousand. The 
benign trust alone is probably far beyond the range of 
human vision ; farther still is the degree of political 
capacity essential to the public administration of one; 
farther still, the political capacity to administer all; 
and when, if ever, these remote ideals have been realized, 
they will need to be reinforced by human control of 
natural forces, to a degree that still farther staggers 
imagination, before the good things of this life can be 
multiplied the fifty-fold that many dreamers fancy 
would result from an even distribution of the present 
product. 

But to come back to the world we know. A trust, if 
properly conducted, not only does away with wasteful 
competition, but it has more of the advantages of "the 
great industry ' ' than smaller individual businesses could 
have: it is getting to be an old story that the large 
production is the cheap production. 
\^2(a).Their Moreover, the trusts save expenses by 

economy. using fcwcr managers, clerks and buildings, 

as well as by diminishing traveling and advertising. 
Where the businesses to be united in the trust are con- 
ducted separately, many of these items are unnecessarily 
duplicated The trusts are said to have dispensed with 
150,000 commercial travelers from '97 to '99, leaving 
these men to go into industries supplying new comforts 
and luxuries, or old ones cheaper. 

But that economy is effected by driving people out 
of work. That certainly is a benefit to the consumer, 
if the trust gives him part of the saving, tho it is not 
at the moment a benefit to the people driven out of 
work. But new demands for labor are created by the 
money saved through cheapened production : therefore 
people thrown out of work to save that money, will 
soon be at work again (331), and also benefiting, as 
consumers, by the cheapened production; and the 
drummers will soon be drumming again for new bene- 



134 The Protection of Rights. [§ 152 a 

fits to the community,* or conferring them in other 
ways. 

If trusts do away with wasteful competition by crush- 
ing out estabhshments that do not join them, there are 
two sides to the question. Of course having so much 
capital, and being able to produce so low under the 
great industry, if it is their interest to keep prices 
low enough, the trusts can run destructive opposition 
to individuals: but on the other hand, after they have 
driven off competition, they may get prices so high 
as to encourage individual concerns to enter the busi- 
ness. 

As a matter of fact, these considerations have often 
kept the profits of monopolies within bounds. The 
weight of intelligent opinion is that but a small relative 
proportion of the great fortunes has been made in 
monopolized industries, but that most have been made 
in industries open to anybody with the ability to con- 
duct them. 

The Census returns for 1900 declare that 
^au ^^I'ombir^^' ^^ various ' ' trusts ' ' or similar combinations, 
one-third paid no dividends, and another 
third paid dividends only on their preferred stock (i 40 c) . 
Notwithstanding the advantages hoped for by combina- 
tion, the stocks of most trusts are, thus far, held in very 
low esteem. This is largely because enormous amounts of 
them were issued in excess of the actual values of the 
properties combined in the trusts : in the whiskey trust, 
for instance, about sevenfold. A very large share of 
these excessive issues of stock often went to bankers, 
lawyers, and other promoters, for their services in 
effecting combinations. The great business depression 
of 1903-4 was largely due to people who su.pposed 
themselves rich in these stocks, having spent more 
money than the stocks turned out to be worth. 

On the other hand, some of the trusts, especially the 

* The landlord of a favorite drummers' hotel told the author 
late in 1900 that he had not noticed any difference in the aggre- 
gate amount of commercial travel, despite the 150,000 men said 
to have been thrown out by the formation of the trusts. 



§ 152 <^] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trusts. 135 

older ones whose stock was not so much watered, have 
been enormously profitable. 

The portion of the total output of their respective 
industries which has been controlled by the trusts, 
has varied between sixty and ninety per cent. The 
control of even sixty per cent, enables a combination 
to regulate prices pretty effectually. 

Probably the best brief summary of this important 
topic is contained in Professor Seager's " Economics." 
152 (e). Theiy man- Inordinate prices in a trust are short- 
cal%!Ts^own^ sighted for tv/o reasons : first , the most prof- 
cwe, itable business must generally be done 

at prices low enough to .enlarge custom; and second, 
the only policy that justifies the existence of a trust, 
is the use of its great facilities to serve the public at 
prices that defy competition from smaller concerns. If 
that is hard on smaller concerns, they can join the 
trust, or go into some business to supply new con- 
veniences or cheapen old ones. Where it is a question 
of the public being served well and cheaply, it will 
not do to be tender about the interests of an individual. 

It is not meant from all this to intimate that, in 
virtue of preventing wasteful competition between their 
members, and producing by cheap processes, the trusts 
are an unmixed good. As already said, they are in 
danger of becoming monopolies, just as 
tlmisdo^s'^not!"^' is an individual competitor choking off 
another : and moreover, if there is no com- 
petitor to force the trusts to keep low prices, they are 
sometimes unwise enough to keep all the economies of 
"the great industry" for their own benefit until they 
find that course suicidal. 

But, it may be asked, has not a man a right to set 
his own price on his own property? If not, what 
becomes of property rights? If one man or one cor- 
poration or one trust has wealth enough to drive out 
weak competitors and get hold of the entire supply 
of any commodity or facility, is it not fair that people 
who want it should pay the holder's price? Perhaps 



136 The Protection of Rights. [§t52<^ 

they should if they let a monopoly get the control, 
but that is just what they should not do. 

Moreover, a man has not always a right to set his 
own price on his own property : a man having a monopoly 

of plenty of food has no right to demand 
rights do^noRi ways ^ Starving man's fortune for enough food 
[.jci^u^^e monopoly to save him. There is a limit, then, to 

property rights. As we have already 
agreed more than once, there is a limit to all rights — ■ 
there is to everything we can conceive of, for that 
matter: the state has a right, whenever the greatest 
good of the greatest number requires it, to take a 
man's property or labor at a fair price, or even his 
life at no price at all, tho it usually pensions a de- 
pendent survivor. The state, then, might properly 
take an unjust monopoly's goods by eminent domain, 
and sell them to the people at reasonable prices. But 

\^x <;t.tP rnn+rni ^^^^^ ^^^ priuciplc is right, the way around 
IS long, it would be simpler tor the state 
to compel the monopoly to sell at reasonable prices, or 
better still, wherever the state can, to encourage compe- 
tition. Laws have been enacted regulating prices of 
such monopolies as railroads, water companies, etc., and 
there are also two classes of what are generally called 
anti-trust laws — one class providing that persons con- 
spiring to unduly raise the price of goods, shall be liable 
to the same penalties as persons conspiring to defraud; 
the other, that corporations so acting shall lose their 
charters, and trusts so acting shall be dissolved. Per- 
haps these laws are yet too new to show whether there 
is much good in them. So far, they have been found 
very hard to enforce: partly because it is very hard 
to get evidence that will fasten the guilt w^here it 
belongs. 

154 (a). By Anti- MonopoHcs are against the common law, 
Trust Laws. ^ud in 1890 the United States Congress (as 

many state legislatures have done before and since) 
reinforced the common law by a statute. The following 
remarks on it in the Times of April 13, 1903, throw 
much light on the subject — not the least, on the difh- 



§ 154^] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trusts. 137 

culty of getting advantages out of such laws. The 
statute declared 

"contracts and combinations in restraint of trade or com- 
merce among the states to be unlawful. . . . Nobody had 
any idea, not even its framers, that it would be used against 
the railroads. . . . Up to the end of the year 1901 there had 
been twenty-three suits brought by the government under 
that Act. Only four of these actions attracted general public 
attention. The Knight case against the Sugar Trust resulted 
in the defeat of the government, the Supreme Court holding 
that production was not commerce. The Trans-Missouri 
Freight Association and the Joint Traffic Association were 
actual combinations to fix rates, and the Supreme Court declared 
them unlawful. In the Addyston Pipe and Steel Company 
case, a particularly vicious conspiracy in restraint of trade 
was broken up by the judgment and decree of the court. Taking 
the twenty-three government suits together, the government 
has lost eleven outright, has accomplished nothing in two, and 
has won ten. Of the ten, four are against labor unions and 
strikers. Of the remaining six, four are the suits above men- 
tioned. Three other suits, that against the Northern Securities 
just decided, the suit against the Beef Trust, and the suit 
against the Federal Salt Company, have been brought since 
the beginning of the year 1902. This makes twenty-six suits 
in thirteen years — two a year. No wonder the agitators pro- 
claimed that the law was a dead letter . . . the anti-trust 
law has been fished up from its condition of nocuous or innocu- 
ous desuetude, under which actions were brought at the rate 
of two a year, to be made to-day the most conspicuous statute 
in the land. . . . It is to be added, however — and the considera- 
tion is an important one — that President Roosevelt's provo- 
cations have far exceeded those to which his predecessors were 
subjected. The Northern Securities combination was quite 
the most flagrant, bold and undisguised defiance of the law 
of 1890 which the country has witnessed. The Beef Trust 
combination was also one peculiarly offensive to the popular 
sense of right, a sense somewhat sharpened, no doubt, by the 
high prices of beef which prevailed a year ago. 

" The brilliant success of the proceedings against the Northern 
Securities Company [a corporation formed to hold the stock 
of several railroad companies, and so do away with competi- 
tion between them. The government dissolved the corporation. 
It is not proved, however, that the result cannot be accom- 
plished in other ways], it is hoped in some quarters and feared 
in others, will inspire the Administration to an enthusiastic 
pursuit of other offending corporations. There are plenty of 
them. Not only the coal-carrying roads, but corporations like 
the New Haven Road, with its control of the Sound steamboat 
lines; the Pennsylvania Railroad, which in one way or another 



138 The Protection of Rights. [§i54<^ 

controls the Reading, the New Jersey Central, and the Balti- 
more and Ohio; the Lake Shore, which controls the "Nickel 
Plate", and dozens of other railroad systems, small and great, 
lie open to the assault of the Attorney-General under the ex- 
ceedingly broad principles of the Northern Securities decision. 
There is no occasion to prove that they do restrain trade or 
fix unreasonable rates. The court says that is not the question; 
and the Supreme Court itself hg.s ruled that the possession of 
the power to do the unlawful acts is all that it is necessary to 
prove." 

The law has been invoked several times since the 
quoted editorial was written, especially regarding ice 
trusts, meat trusts, and railroad rebates, with the 
punishment of some offenders, and probably the dis- 
couragement of some abuses into which, without the 
law, the trusts both of capital and labor would have 
ventured. All newspaper readers know the details: so 
it is hardly worth while to state them here. More- 
over, Congress has passed the Railroad Rate Bill, whose 
efhcacy is yet to be tested, and the Meat Inspection Bill. 
,.. ,. , ^ .^ , While in a case that has come under 

154 r6;. Capital ... 1 r r ^ 

Trusts and Labor my knowledge, a number 01 manuiacturers 
''"^^^' of exceptional standing were advised by 

their counsel not to agree on rates and prices, for 
fear they would be haled into court for violating the 
an ti -trust law, the Sherman Interstate Act, and the 
Donnelly Act, the members of the trades-unions all 
over the country are agreeing to keep up prices, with- 
out anybody paying any attention to the illegality 
of it; and all this despite the laboring man's standard 
claim that he, of all men, is the constant victim of 
injustice ! 

So far as monopolies are controlled, as they nearl^^ all 
are, by corporations, the state has a right to regulate 
them, because the corporations are made by the state. 
When the state confers on a corporation the privileges of 
limited liability, the right to sue and be sued as a unit, 
and the right of continuous association of property in- 
terests in spite of the death of a member, the state has a 
right, of course, to name the conditions on which it 
confers the benefits — the duties which must attach to 



§154^] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trusts. 139 

the rights — and prominent among these conditions, of 
course, are defences against misuse of monopoly privi- 
leges. 

154 (c). By fixing Probably the most frequent instance of 
P''''^^^- the state thus making wise conditions, is 

the regulation of railroad rates — street-car fares in 
cities, mileage rates on steam roads, and freight rates 
between points where there are not competing roads. 
It might be wiser to force the roads to keep their prices 
down, by setting a limiit to the profits they shall divide: 
for an arbitrary price might be less than they could 
continue business at. But a danger in limiting profits, 
is that the roads would prefer to earn them by a small 
and easy business at high prices, rather than a larger and 
more difficult business at low prices; whereas, if they are 
permitted to make all they can, they may often widen 
business by rates even lower than those which would 
give them the profit arbitrarily fixed for them. A 
road might make as much money by running a few 
trains at a dollar a head, as by running m^ore at seventy- 
five cents, and prefer the smaller trouble and wear of 
the few trains at a dollar. Yet it might make a great 
deal more money by running still more trains at fifty 
cents, but be restrained because not permitted to earn 
more than it could at a dollar. 

154 w. Byemi- One of the best instances of wise state 
nent domain. interference with monopoly abuses, by 
direct exercise of eminent domain, is at Niagara Falls. 
The neighborhood used to be one of the plague-spots of 
the earth — covered with unsightly and ill -arranged 
structures, and infested by extortionate hackmen and 
cheating fakirs of all sorts. The state took the land 
by eminent dom.ain, made a beautiful park of it, and 
has everything well managed at reasonable prices. 
154 (e). Danger of ^^^ such State interferences may become 
government tyrannical and foolish. Corrupt politi- 

tyranny. cians may interfere to extort blackmail, 

and at best the state cannot know all sorts of business, 
and should be very slow to interfere with, or itself 
conduct, any. 



I40 The Protection of Rights. [§ ^55 

,„ _- , ^ , The effect of the s^reat corporations and 

155. Effect of great ,> i-i^.-- ij- ^ 
aggregations of trusts on legislation IS much discussed. 

capital on Legis- They can afford to bribe more than smaller 

private concerns could, and get all sorts of 

"protective" laws to shut off foreign competition, so 

that they can impose upon the public the highest rates 

the public will pay; and they can often make most 

money by selling to a few at high prices, and forcing the 

many to go without. The Sugar Trust is generally 

believed to have bought three senators of the United 

States in the Fifty-second Congress, and prevented 

the passage of a reformed tariff bill which that Congress 

was specially elected to pass. Tho that Congress did 

pass a reformed tariff bill, it was a very lame and 

doubtful one, largely owing to the obstruction of the 

suspected senators. The reform did not reach the 

sugar. 

156. Socialism as I't ^^^ been urged that we could get rid 
a remedy of the corruption if the state itself ran 
all the industries — that we could get rid of all the trusts 
by making the state itself a trust that should include 
them all, as proposed by Mr. Bellamy; and one argument 
is that then there would be no one interested to buy 
votes. But examined, this is simply a claim that it 
would be better if the politicians were running the 
industries themselves: so they could vote to favor 
their pets without being bought — so that instead of 
having the corruption funds of the corporations and 
trusts ladled out to them as now, they would hold the 
ladle themselves. Tho nominally the politicians would 
be working the industries for the state, and not for 
themselves, we have seen enough of the way they are 
apt to "work for the state and not for themselves". 
Moreover, business will be managed much better if 
the manager is working for his own benefit, and ac- 
cording to his own ideas, than if he is working for the 
state, and according to its own ideas — even if there 
were any way of keeping the state's ideas fixed. But, 
it is urged, the manager of a corporation or a trust 



§157] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trusts. 141 

is not generally working for himself; yet he generally 
owns a large share, while if his concern belonged to the 
government, he would not own a millionth part. 
157. The only ^^13 only effective policy, then, against 

real remedies. the corruption of legislatures by monopo- 
lies, seems to be to do our best to see that only incor- 
ruptible men are elected to office, to perfect our laws, 
and to educate people so that there will be more 
chance of the corporations and trusts being managed 
by men who will develop the good side for the benefit 
of the community as well as of themselves. The state 
must continue to make corporations and permit trusts 
in some form, while at the same time it must make laws 
to protect people from them; and it must do this for 
the same reasons that it encourages the rearing of 
citizens, when it has to make laws to protect itself 
against bad ones — corporations and trusts have their 
good sides just as people have. 

Probably the competition in drumming and advertising 
has done as much as anything else to lead to the forma- 
tion of the trusts. The success of "publicity" in some 
businesses peculiarly responsive to it, has recently led to 
a wasteful mania for it, and extravagant efforts of dealers 
to outdo each other in it, even regarding things, like 
books, of inevitably limited demand, and touching which 
people make up their own minds, more or less under 
expert advice. Regarding this waste and some others, 
Professor Cooley indicates a remedial influence outside 
of the trusts. He says * that competition grows with 
capital and industrial freedom, and that it declines as 
intelligence and morality on the part of the buyer grow. 
These conditions of growth are plain, on a little reflec- 
tion, but the reasons for decline may justify a little 
explanation. When a man knows good from bad, 
and follows the good when he sees it, he will be apt 
to make up his own mind, and it is therefore a com- 
parative waste to send a drummer or a tempting adver- 

* In his remarkable pamphlet on Competition, published by 
the American Economic Association. 



142 The Protection of Rights. [§ ^57 

tisement after him. Moreover, and doubly important, 
if he is an honest man in a position of trust, hke that 
of a commissioner of pub he works or education, he 
is not going to choose subordinates or material on ac- 
count of anybody's ''pull". 

Another hopeful influence that seems likely to promote 
the advantages and suppress the disadvantages of com- 
petition in the future, is the growing recognition of 
broad self-interest and of civic responsibility. Already 
there is here and there a man at the head of a great 
combination who, like Pullman or Wanamaker, amid 
all the errors of the struggle, shows some realization 
that the best profit lies in serving the public well and 
cheaply, and has some sense of duty to his fellow 
men. 

157 (a). An iiius- Probably there is justification — double 
tration. justification as it recalls the bright exam- 

ple of a good man, for a more specific illustration that 
success is not dependent on the kind of competition 
that excludes human sympathy. I have the best 
occasion to know that some forty years ago, a man 
very young in the publishing business had occasion 
to call, on some purely commercial matter, on the 
late Mr. Charles Scribner, the founder of the great 
house, to whom the young man was barely known by 
name. As the visitor was about leaving, Mr. Scribner 
said: "When I see a young man beginning business, 
it makes me recall my perplexities when I began. 
It would have been everything to me if I could have 
taken them to some more experienced man. I should 
be very glad if you care to bring yours freely to me." 
There has never been any indication that the great 
business founded in that spirit is any the worse for 
it, while the kind suggestion could have brought 
nothing but good to the " competing "(?) business. 
Certainly if that spirit actuated all the members of 
each trade, the world would be a great deal happier — 
and richer: the money — or let us say the force, of 
which money is only the index — now wasted in com- 



§ ^57^] Competition, Monopoly, Industrial Trusts. 143 

petition, would be saved for making new things or 
cheapening old ones. But how to bring about that 
ideal state of affairs? Well, the persons most imme- 
diately at hand to begin, are, patient reader, you and I. 
Of course, in courtesy, I yield you the precedence. 



CHAPTER XI. 

RIGHTS IN NATURAL MONOPOLIES. 

,,o o +1,' There is a class of monopolies which must 

158. Somethings . ,. . ^ . ,. 

are inevitably in their very nature remain monopolies, 

monopolies. -^ g^-^^ ^f ^y^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ 

A street railroad usually remains a monopoly because 
not more than one can ordinarily be laid in a street. It 
is generally the same with a city's water-supply and 
gas-supply, and even its sewerage, connections with 
which are actually sold in some places. Perhaps, too, 
it would not be straining language to say that in some 
industries, the first factory built is a natural monopoly, 
because while there may be demand enough to support 
that one, even at a very great profit, there may not be 
demand enough to justify building another. 

And such city works and factories are not the only 
things which are naturally monopolies. Nearly all roads, 
bridges and ferries are, and so are natural objects which 
cannot be duplicated — such as extraordinary mines and 
springs, and picturesque works of Nature like Niagara 
and the Yellowstone. 

158 ra; But the Some people even go so far as to think 

earth not one of that there is a natural monopoly a great 
*^^'"' deal bigger than all the things we have 

named put together — namely, the entire land of the 
earth. But it is impossible to see why. Any one piece 
of land is a monopoly : but so is any one jjiece of pork, 
and the land in any single locality may be "cornered", 
as pork or lumber or wool or anything else may; but 
land generally, cannot be a monopoly, so long as no one 

144 



§ i6oJ Rights in Natural Monopolies. 145 

party owns all of it, and people are competing with each 

other in selling it, any more than anything else that is 

generally dealt in can be a monopoly. Yet there are 

thousands of people, and some of them very good people, 

who actually think that all the inequalities in the lot 

of man arise from land being a monopoly, and that the 

inequalities would be removed if people paid rent to 

the state instead of to landlords (66). 

4 en u/L DM A But to return to things which are natural 

159. V/hy Railroads ,. . ^ f" , ^. 

are apt to be mon- monopolies : between two places there can 

°P°^^^' be several railroads, why then is one apt 

to be a monopoly ? Because the first one laid out is apt 

to be on the best route, and there is seldom any other 

route good enough to compete with it. Another 

prominent reason is that the travel may be enough to 

pay enormous profits on one road, v/ithout being enough 

to justify building another. 

4cn / , iA,u 4-u A railroad cannot be built without gov-. 

159 io.). Why they ^ xi -^ i_ • xi ^ 

need government emmcnt authority, Dccause m the country, 
authorization, ^^ couT^Q nobody cau take land for a road 
without government authority (78), while in a city 
it would not do to have anybody who felt like it, 
take possession of a street for a railroad. Some streets 
would soon be so full of tracks as to be destroyed for 
other purposes, and few streets would be left free from 
them. Moreover, as the right to build a railroad is 

valuable, the city ought to be paid for it 
^pay%ft!'^'^'""'^Y those who occupy the streets for the 

purpose. The right is really a lease of 
the streets, and generally a salable one. 
\^% (c). So with The rights to supply light, water, etc., 

other facilities. ^^^ ^q control most otlicr such things, are 
in the nature of monopolies, and of course rights to use 
the streets for such purposes are virtually leases too. 

The rights to control these natural monopolies are 
called Franchises. 

While the community can sell franchises 

America°being gen- to corporations or individuals, in Europe 

erailv grabbed -^^q community generally either uses the 

^ ^ ' franchises itself, or leases them, at great 



146 The Protection of Rights. [§ 160 

advantage; but in America, until very lately, it has 
generally let the politicians and their friends make up 
private corporations and settle down on the franchises 
without any return whatever to the community. 
This has been permitted because people are generally 
too lazy, or too engrossed in their own affairs, or too 
stupid, to take care of their public rights — because, in 
short, they lack political ability — which of course in- 
cludes political virtue, just as (despite a few conspicuous 
exceptions to the contrary) business ability includes 
business virtue. If the people had enough political 
virtue or ability to take care of their own interests, 
they could manage their franchises through their own 
officers. Yet it might be just as wise under any circum- 
stances to sell rights to do part of the work, as it is 
for other corporations to do the same; for instance, the 
railroads often sell rights to run palace- and dining-cars, 
and to supply reading-matter on trains. 

As a rule, when a community wishes to get a profit from 
its franchises, it is best not to sell them outright once 
for all, but to lease them, and only for terms of years : 

because, as the city grows, the franchises 
sold ^uSht""* ^^ become more fruitful. As an instance of 

the value of such rights, the city of Balti- 
more has unusually good parks, and unusually many of 
them, which are paid for and kept up by a portion of 
the receipts of the street railroads. Some other Ameri- 
can cities are beginning to get revenues from their street 
railways and most European cities which do not run 
their own, derive large revenues from the companies 
which lease the franchises. 
.ft« u„ . , Now let us look back of this little dis- 

ib/i. How natural . r , ^ i- i 1 

Mononoiies become cussion 01 natural monopolies, to see now 
Personal Property, f^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ justified in treating rights 

in natural monopolies as rights of property. So far we 
have been principally concerned in relation to property 
rights, with their creation by the development of natural 
resources through manufactures and transportation, 
and with the determination of what shares of the result 
should go to the Laborer, the Capitalist and the Enter- 



§162] Rights in Natural Monopolies. 147 

priser. The landlord is of course one of the capitalists. 
We came to treat monopolies and trusts in these con- 
nections, because they are aggregations of capital. It 
is more than a mere metaphor to regard even natural 
monopolies in the same way. Railroads, city water- 
supplies, etc., are plainly aggregations of capital, but 
each of them is both an artificial and a natural monopoly ; 
a mine is perhaps more distinctly a natural one. And 
yet as soon as any one of these natural monopolies, or 
even a natural curiosity or beauty attracting admission- 
fees, begins to pay income, it becomes capital, and 
therefore its shares become personal property. 

We will consider these matters more at length when 
we come to Q-overnment's Promotion of Convenience o 
Now let us go on to the Law of Personal Property. 



CHAPTER XIL^ 



THE LAW OF RIGHTS IN PERSONAL PROPERTY. 

We saw (82) that the ownership of personal property 
is generally transferred by mere delivery. It is seldom 
registered, like that of land, because in most cases the 

perishable and transferable nature of 
Iween^Uw^of Per-^" personal property would make registry 
th"t ' f L^'^^d^'^ ^"^ merely a nuisance ; but its ownership is 

sometimes registered when it passes out 
of the owner's possession. For instance, if goods are 

163 ra;. Personal P^^ ^^ ^ pubhc warehousc or given to an 
property seldom exprcss or freight company, or money is 
registered. j^£^ ^^ dcposit, the article is entered in 

a book, and a receipt of some kind is generally given. 
.r.r, ,., , . . Bonds are often registered in the owner's 

]63 (b). Important P . . 

kinds passed by name at the omce 01 the company issuing 
en orsemen . them, and stocks always are, tho upon 
being issued, they may be endorsed in blank, and pass 
through many hands before being registered again. 

"Endorsed" means literally "on-backed", and usu- 
ally refers to writing one's name on the back of a paper 
entitling the writer to some sort of personal property. 
Endorsing is generally in token that the writer parts 
with the right to the value stated on the face of the 
paper, in favor of whoever may thereafter hold the 
paper, or of some person named in the endorsement. 

If the endorsement is in favor of a particular person 
named, the latter can pass the value on, by himself 
writing a second endorsement. The principal kinds 
of papers entitling somebody to receive value, of which 

148 



§ 163 <^3 The Law of Rights in Personal Property. 149 

the value is passed on through endorsement, are bank 
checks, promissory notes, stocks, bonds and warehouse 
receipts for many kinds of merchandise. 

As a rule, if an endorser has prompt legal notice that 
the signer of the paper fails to make it good, he is 
responsible that any later holder shall receive what is 
called for on the face of the paper, but not in the case 
of stocks and bonds. On them, an endorsement is 
merely an authorization to the company to register the 
certificate in a new name. 

When an endorser becomes responsible, it is on the 
theory that he has received an equivalent from the later 
holder, and therefore is responsible to him for the value 
for which that equivalent was given; the same theory 
follows each transfer of the document. But in fact, an 
endorser does not always receive an equivalent, unless 
friendship or favor is to be so considered : for men often 
endorse checks and promissory notes, and make them- 
selves responsible for their payment, to enable their 
makers to use them where their credit would not other- 
wise enable them to. 

With three exceptions (87), one has a 

]Q3(c). Can take • 1,4. 4. . i > 2 t, 

one's owniuherever Tight to take ouc s property whercvcr one 
found and /n some gggg {^^ {f j^g ^au do SO without violencc : 

CCLS6S Oy jOfCQf ^ ■ J J . -a ^ 

otherwise the rule is about the same as 
in real estate. 

If a robber has put property in another person's 
house, the owner must not break in or fight his way to it. 
Rather than have the peace disturbed, the law prefers 
that he should stand still and risk the robber's carrying 
the property to a place of concealment, on the chances 
of preventing that in some other way. If somebody 
goes into the owner's house for it, and has it and refuses 
to give it up at the owner's demand, it is then the duty 
of any citizen satisfied that he has stolen it, to arrest 
him, as it is to arrest anybody he finds committing 
a crime. 

If the robber resists, any citizen arresting is armed 
with the authority of the law, and can use any force 
necessary. True, the citizen could not use any force 



150 The Protection of Rights. [§ 163 c 

necessary to drive a man off from his land (81 5), but 
his being there was not a crime. The citizen has the 
duty and the power to arrest only in cases of crime — 
such as murder, arson, burglary or theft. 

The exceptions already alluded to, where a person 
cannot peaceably take his own property wherever he 
sees it, are, in a sense, not exceptions, but rather 
instances (the only ones) where a thing 
]}%im'ehhids''can'^ may peacefully cease to be one's property 
be lost without without onc's receiving a satisfactory 

neglect. . ^ ? . ^ •^- 

equivalent, or at least (as m the case 01 
taxes or eminent domain) one declared satisfactory 
by the law. These exceptional instances are money 
and "negotiable paper" — bank checks, promissory 
notes and bills of exchange. If theft or accident puts 
one of them in wrong hands, and they transfer it for 
good value to a holder innocent of any wrong or knowl- 
edge of wrong regarding it, the innocent holder can 
recover its value from all parties who would be liable 
if it had to come to him regularly. Of course this is 
hard on honest makers and endorsers of such paper, 
who lose it, or from whom it is stolen, but it would be 
harder on the community if all business had to wait 
for the history of every piece of commercial paper to 
be investigated, as it has to wait for real-estate titles 
to be investigated. As a matter of fact, the easy 
transfer of rights in commercial paper is seldom hard 
on anybody: for the result of the law is that people 
take such good care of their paper that it is seldom 
lost or stolen. 

While personal property can be loaned or hired out 
in an infinite number of ways, ownership of it is not 
considered as enduring enough to be popularly called 
an "estate", as in land; yet there can be a life estate 
in some kinds of personal property, perhaps in any 
kind, notably in libraries and works of art. 

Like land, however, it can be mortgaged. 
worilajid" without Such a mortgage is called a chattel mort- 
registry if in mort- crsiCTQ and uulcss the mortgagee takes 

gagees possession. o&»_ -i-i-i,, 

possession, the mortgage, like a real-estate 



§ 165] The Law of Rights in Personal Property. 151 

mortgage, is not good against creditors unless »it is 
recorded. 

p The difference between a chattel mort- 

^ ^' gage and a pledge, is that a pledge is always 
accompanied with possession of the chattel by the per- 
son making the loan; a chattel mortgage, if registered, 
need not be. 

There are millions of times as many agreements made 
regarding personal property as regarding land, for 
personal property is constantly traded, from the candy- 
shops to the stock-exchanges, by people who never have 
any land, and even professional dealers in land have 
to deal many times as often in personal property, in 
connection with the ordinary requirements of life 
,„. D , These facts of course make personal 

165. Personal oron- . n ^ ^ r r^ ., 

erty the great field property the great held 01 Contract: so 
of contract. what time we can give to details of the law 

of personal property can best be used incidentally to our 
consideration of Contract. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CONTRACT. 

As an Element in Civilization. 

166. Difference We have Seen that men start with a right 
HgEn?pfoperty ^o appropriate things from Nature, to 
rights. labor on them, and to keep the results. 
But rights to prevent a person taking or holding an- 
other's property are merely rights to prohibit something. 
Rights to demand something — demand another's things 
or labor, plainly can arise only by giving or promising 
something in return. 

The modern state protects each party in his right to 
demand fulfilment from the other. 

167. Contract, ^^^ rights arising from such agreements 
agreement, bargain, are technically called Rights under Con- 
tract. Contract means nearly the same thing as 
agreement. But etymologically, agreement means 
something to the satisfaction of both parties, while 
contract means merely drawn together, or perhaps 
bound together, as we often say when a bargain is under 
way, that the people are trying to "get together". 
There is still a third word for that same thing — bargain. 
But the word "contract" having been more associated 
with law, has been kept more strictly to its early 
meaning; for instance, it seldom has anything to do 
with the profitableness of an agreement, while "bargain " 
is often used to mean merely a profitable transaction. 
A good contract generally means one that legally binds 

152 



§ 169] Contract as an Element in Civilization. 153 

the parties, while a good bargain means rather one that 
is profitable to one side or both. Yet each word is 
used in both senses. Bargain, tho, is never used in a 
general sense as one of the great foundation-stones of 
civilization, as we shall see that Contract is. People 
of low intelligence or low morality or both, sometimes 
break contracts, on the ground that they do not yield 
good bargains. 

IRQ rn«+roo+ n«n ^ slavc or Serf cannot make any con- 
ies. Contract nos- ... ., ~ , - •' ^ 

sibieoniy tothe tracts to Speak oi, because he cannot de- 
^®^' pend on keeping any ; he can only do what 

his master says. This affects his rights to property: 
for, as whatever he does is under his master's orders, 
his master takes the profit or bears the loss. If there 
is a loss — if crops turn out badly, for instance, the 
master is supposed to take care of the slave under all 
circumstances. 

Whether the system is good or bad, depends upon 
what it is compared with. Slavery would not be good 
in a civilized community ; but savages are so much like 
children that, if left to themselves, they would be more 
apt to starve, and rob and kill each other, than if an 
able man had absolute control to keep them in some 
sort of order, and tell them what to do. 

All societies that have reached civilization, have had 
to pass through conditions of slavery, serfdom and 
feudalage. 

Many societies have long stood still, like those of 
India and China — some until they could stand no longer, 
and were overcome or died out. Nothing higher than a 
vegetable can stand still and flourish — a society, a busi- 
ness, a human being, or even a beast, raust progress — 
at least enough for exercise, or it will decay. It is like 
a person on a bicycle — he must move or come down. 
.CO p * * The way to teach a man to take care of 

169. Contract an , . ^r ■ ^ ^ 1 • ^^ ., 1 r 

education in free- himseli, IS to leave him to take care of 
himself, just so far as safety permits. 
Obviously, a man cannot get ahead unless he can dis- 
pose of his own labor, and in the present state of man- 



154 The Protection of Rights. [§169 

kind, he cannot get ahead very far, in property at 
least, unless he can dispose of the labor of others. 
This does not mean unless he can enslave others: free- 
men cooperate with a man of true ability to their own 
good, as well as to his. 

The difference between the modern guide of labor 
and the slaveholder, is that the slaveholder, even tho 
he be incapable and unable or unwilling to take good 

170. Under Con- care of liis slaves, can still force them 
tract, only Able -j^q ^ork for him. The modern employer 

emplovers can . , . . . ^ , 1 c 

secure Labor. cannot force his laborer to work for 

him, because the modern laborer, especially with mod- 
ern facilities of travel, can contract where he pleases. 
He is not shut up on his master's place, as the churls 
and the villeins of England and the serfs of Russia 
and slaves of America were. The civihzed laborer's 
power to contract, makes it necessary that his em- 
ployer should treat him both well and ably. Therefore 
the modern employer must be really able — capable of 
guiding his men well, and deserving his position, or com- 
petition will get his men away from him. And it is 
becoming more the case every day, that employers 
have to compete with each other to get the best labor; 
and he who best guides his labor, and cares for it so as 
to make it most vigorous, intelHgent and cheerful, gen- 
erally comes out ahead in the competition, and makes 
most money. 

The scientific name for the primitive state of affairs 
where most men were obliged to stand still just where 
they were born, is status (the Latin word for standing). 
One reflecting upon the condition is tempted to suggest 
the English expression "stick-in-the-m.ud". The condi- 

171. status versus ^ion where men can dispose of themselves 
Contract. and their property as they please, is called 
the condition of Contract. Wherever status, or "stand- 
ing", is the condition, if a man is born a ruler, important 
or petty, he stays one; if he is born a serf or peasant, 
he stays one. 

In quite primitive societies, there are examples, such 
as Mahomet and Genghis Khan, of people changing 



§ 172] Contract as an Element in Civilization. 155 

their standing very much, but they were only occa- 
sional men in generations: there could be only one 
now and then, because they rose by controlling men, not 
by contracting with them. In our day, nearly every 
civilized man can contract. 

The system of property -holding under 
dom an°d PHvate^®" which Mahomet and Genghis Khan rose, 
Kfher.^"^^"'^® ^^^ communal (54), with some slavery 
and hardly any Contract. There is hardly 
any Contract under the communal system, because 
nobody has enough estate in the land to make much 
contracting with it, or its produce, possible. 

The property-system under which Hildebrand and 
Rudolph of Hapsburg, for instance, rose, was Feudal (55) 
with some little contract. There was more contract 
under the feudal system than under the communal, 
because the estates in land were much longer: at the 
outset of the system they were generally for life, and 
rapidly became transferable and even hereditary, tho 
always limited, of course, by the rights of the overlord. 

The system under which Lincoln and Garfield and 
Peabody and Peter Cooper rose, is of course the most 
advanced of all — private ownership and contract every- 
where. 

We find, then, Slavery, no Contract; Communism, 
hardly any; Feudalism, a little; Private Property, 
Contract everjrwhere. 

Under feudalism, the relation of each man to his 
feudal superior, was apparently one of contract to fur- 
nish so much military or personal service; or later, a 
certain portion of the products of his land. But reflec- 
tion shows that it was a contract only so far as a con- 
tract can be made by one side, and that side the stronger. 

As men have risen under all systems, of course there 
is no system where all men stand still. In other words, 
there has been no condition of universal Status or of 
universal Contract. All that the facts show is that the 
more Status and the more Communism, the fewer men 
rise; the more Contract and the more Private Owner- 



156 The Protection of Rights. [§172 

ship, the more men rise. Under the amount of Contract 
in the United States, a thousand men — probably ten 
thousand, possibly a hundred thousand, improve their 
condition, where one does in Russia or India, or did in 
mediae val Europe or under the Turks or Tartars. 

The first marked decrease of Status and increase of 
Contract appears in the decline of Feudalism, which is an- 
other name for Militarism, and in the increase of Private 
Property. Militarism declined as civilization advanced, 
173 Asthev ^""^ Spite of the fact that Europe is a col- 

evoiye, militarism lection of camps to-day. But those camps 
®^'"^^" have ensured peace in Europe since 1870: 

each nation has been merely playing soldier to keep the 
others from attacking it. Before 1870, there had never 
been ten years without war among them. 

The decline of Militarism was essential to doing away 
with- Status, because extreme militant conditions are 
necessarily conditions of status: people 
?form ofSus.'^ ^^^ simply command and obey : the enemy 
will not allow them any chance for divided 
policy, or much chance to do business or accumulate 
property. Hence it is only in civilized society that 
the chief activities, instead of being warlike or militant 
can be industrial. In a militant society, the men gen- 
erally do what they are compelled to; in an industrial 
society, they do what they agree to : so they are making 
contracts all the time. 

175. Fighting ver- ^^ really is a question between a fighting 
sus producing. \{{q and a trading life, or rather a pro- 
ducing life. With communal or feudal property, people 
never produced enough to get rich, and the only way 
people like those of India or Greece or Rome ever got 
rich, was by robbing somebody else. And as a fact, 
they never did get rich in the modern sense. A few 
people got rich, and made a great show, and did some 
fine work in art, literature and statesmanship ; but the 
masses were slaves. 
i7K/^. in * * ^ Amons: communal and feudal peoples 

175 (a), //lustfated . 9 . ^ , ^ n^i 1 

in nations of to-day, it IS about the same. I here has 
to-day. ^^^ been much change in Russia and India 

and China, for instance, except in name. 



§177] Contract as an Element in Civilization. 157 

Japan is the greatest instance the world ever saw of 
rapid growth in wealth, power and civilization; and she 
is an illustration of our thesis: her progress has been 
accompanied with the most rapid change ever seen of 
communal and feudal property into private property, 
of a general condition of status into one of contract. 
In Japan, too, despite some superficial appearances, 
private property and contract depended on the down- 
fall of militarism: in the barbarous and feudal sense 
of every man being a fighter and thinking of little but 
fighting, militarism has gone. The Japanese gentle- 
man does not now carry a sword much oftener than 
the English gentleman, and in Japan, despite the won- 
derful showing in her war with Russia, fighting is or- 
dinarily as much a matter of special profession as in 
France or Germany. 

The spread of the institution of private 
Property^is esserf- property, then, as distinct from communal 
beioSd'staS property (54) or feudal property (55), is 
necessary to change a condition of status 
into one of contract, because to do much contracting, 
a man must have property of his very own. If the 
community or the overlord owns all the real estate, 
there is not much personal property to contract with. 
No communal or feudal people ever got much personal 
property yet, unless by pillage. 

While wealth is not civilization, there never has been 
any broad and high civilization without wealth. The 
boasted poverty of Sparta, for instance, was accom- 
panied by virtual slavery of every man to the state, and 
by a general belief that skill in theft was a virtue. 

As, then, wealth depends on manufacturing and 
trading, we seem brought to the practical conclusion 
that civilization rests on people trading freely with 
177. Civilization ©a-ch other, and such is the fact regarding 
and" trade go to- all civilization except the sort built on 
^^ ^^' pillage and slavery, and that sort is nar- 

row and perishing. There never has been very high 
civilization enjoyed by the general community, without a 



158 The Protection of Rights. [§ i77 

great deal of trading; and the higher the civiHzation, the 
more the trading. Then conies in the fact that there 
never has been much trading without the wide preva- 
lence of the institutions of private property and con- 
tract, and there is no reason in sight to believe that 
there ever will be ; and then follows the conclusion that 
a producing, trading, contracting form of civilization 
is as much needed to produce from the ranks of the 
common people a statesman like Lincoln, as to produce 
a manufacturer like Peter Cooper. 
„o o I ■ r AH this demonstrates that a man v/ho 

178. Breaking Con- , . , , . ^ . , . ,.,,, 

tracts and advoca- breaks a contract IS domg his mean little 
ting Socialism. ^-^SiTQ toward bringing the world back to 
the condition of status; and that a man who advo- 
cates socialism is trying to put the state in the place 
of the slaveholder, and so to lessen the amount of con- 
tract — to make government command what people shall 
do, instead of leaving them to contract to do what 
they please — in short he too would get us back to status. 
Here are two views on the subject that are worth 
thinking over: In 1903, Grand Master Morrisey of the 
Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen said to his national 
convention : ' ' We shall see the time when we will regard 
the contract-breaker . . . with as much contempt as 
we now regard the scab." C. P. Shea, President of 
the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, on trial 
at this writing for instigating the assaults and murders 
in the Chicago Teamsters' strike, said: "I do not con- 
sider anything a violation of an agreement, that is done 
to uphold the principles of trades-unionism." 



. CHAPTER XIV. 

GENERAL LAW OF CONTRACT. 

Now we will consider the details of Contract. Courts 
do not want to use their time without reason — ^when, 
for instance, somebody claims that there was a con- 
tract when really there was none at all: so the courts 
have established a test by which to determine, when 
parties dispute, whether there really was a contract 
between them. 

179. Essentials of a ^0 be a contract, there must be an 
Contract. offer by one side, an acceptance by the 

other, and a reasonable consideration why the offer 
should be made and accepted. 

All such considerations are. found to be included 
under the three categories of something to be given, 
something to be done or refrained from, or natural 
love and affection. The Romans included it all (except 
natural love and affection) in four cases — -I give to get 
you to give, I act to get you to give, I give to get you 
to act, and I act to get you to act.* 

But the subject is not really covered by something 
given or to be given, or something done or to be 
done: it may include something not to be done, or, 
as already said, something to be refrained from. A 
has a right to do something, B offers him something 
not to, A agrees. Nov/ A does not agree either to give 
or do, but merely to refrain, yet he binds B to give or 
do what he offered as an inducement for the refraining. 

* Do ut des, do ut facias, facto ut des, facio ut facias. 

159 . 



i6o The Protection of Rights. [§ ^79 

Yet if we take "act" in the broad sense of a course of 
conduct, the Romans' pat way of putting it, does cover 
the idea of refraining being a "consideration". "By 
a man's acts shall he be judged" — "acts" there evi- 
dently includes temperance and self-restraint — refrain- 
ing from certain acts, as much as doing certain others. 
179 (a), nuistra- Now to illustrate each kind of contract : 
't'^"^- A offers B a dollar for a plant ; each article 

is given that the other may be given. This is Roman 
case I. A offers B a dollar to do a day's work. This 
covers Roman case II. A offers B to do a day's work 
for a dollar. This is Roman case III. And A offers B 
to do a day's work if B will take him for a drive on 
Sunday. This is Roman case IV. 

To illustrate the case the Roman summary leaves 
out — where the consideration is refraining from doing 
something: A has a lot next to B's, and proposes to 
build a wall that will shut out light and air from B's 
house; B offers him a thousand dollars to refrain from 
doing it: A refrains: B is bound to pay the money. 

It may be observed in passing (tho we shall return 
to the subject again) that while it may not be right 
to shut light and air out of your neighbor's house, it 
may be more nearly right than it would be to keep 
your own wife and children in rooms too small for them, 
or to have noise or anything else from your neighbor's 
windows disturbing them. 

180. Natural Love ^^ illustrate a contract where the con- 
and Affection. sideration is natural love and affection : 

A father agrees to do something for a son with- 
out receiving anything in return. Now the law does 
not enforce mere gifts, but it will hold this to be a 
good contract, because it holds the natural love and 
affection to be a consideration. Yet that considera- 
tion seems queer, because if a father agrees to do some- 
thing for a son because he loves him so much, and then 
refuses to stand by it, he simply proves that he did not 
love his son. that much — in other words, that there was 
no consideration ; all of which seem.s to show that where 
natural love and affection is alleged to be the con- 



§ i8i] General Law of Contract. i6i 

sideration, the contract may be a very weak one; and 
that where natural love and affection is strong enough 
to make a contract strong, there must be love enough 
to make a contract unnecessary. Yet there is a more 
logical view than that the father does it because of 
his own love for his child, namely, that the father makes 
the contract because the child gives him the ** natural 
love and affection." But, strange to say, I do not 
happen to have known this view presented elsewhere. 
Yet there is good reason, after all, why courts should 
support such contracts, even if the consideration is held 
to be natural love and affection entertained by the per- 
son making the promise: for if a man fails in busi- 
ness or dies, those who take charge of his affairs must 
carry out his contracts as far as they can, while his 
mere intended gifts, where there is no consideration, 
may frequently be set aside. So it is more merciful to 
his unfortunate family, to put his gifts to them on as 
good a footing as his business transactions. Yet, tho the 
courts will generally enforce contracts based on ' ' natu- 
ral love and affection", unless there is also a "good 
and valuable consideration" they are apt to look with 
suspicion upon them, and to set them aside if they 
bear any strong indication of wronging creditors or 
later purchasers for valuable consideration. 

181. Promises and O^ course entirely outside of any "con- 
Contracts, sideration" whatever, a promise ought to 
be as binding as a contract, in honor: because there 
should be no honor less than perfect honor; but it is 
not as binding in law, and this because, for many rea- 
sons, law cannot deal with so delicate a thing as honor. 
Justice is as high as law can go. 

We spoke (1636) of endorsements being made, like 
promises, without consideration, simply from friend- 
ship or favor. The question of whether the law will 
enforce them, of course cannot come up regarding the 
person originally responsible on the paper: for the en- 
dorsement is simply an obligation to pay, not the prin- 
cipal, but third parties, if he does not. But if those 



1 62 The Protection of Rights. [§ i8i 

third parties are innocent holders for value paid, the 
law enforces the endorsement. Yet often the third 
party — a bank for instance, is not an "innocent third 
party", but knows that the endorsement is merely for 
accommodation, and yet takes the accommodation paper, 
just as it loans money at the market rate if it is higher 
than the legal rate, because it depends upon people 
to carry out their contracts without appealing to defects 
in the law. 

If paper has been forged, its possession for value 
by an innocent third party, does not make it good, 
unless the person whose name is forged can be held for 
some gross carelessness. The reason is that nobody 
ever undertook to pay it. 

Justice requires enforcement of contracts, and not of 
promises, because breaking a promise without consider- 
ation, takes nothing from the other man, while break- 
ing a contract takes from him whatever he does or gives 
on his side, or the thought and trouble and arrange- 
ments he may have been put to in making the contract, 
and toward carrying it out. To illustrate : if A is under 
promise to B and under contract to C, and then fails 
or dies, so that both cannot be satisfied, C, who has 
parted with 'some consideration, would suffer more 
than B, who has parted with nothing: therefore the 
law does what it can to protect the contract, while 
it pays no attention to the promise. 

But where natural love and affection is the consid- 
eration, C has not parted with anything, and yet the 
law treats the case as if he had, because there would 
be so much hardship if the law should require the 
representatives of bankrupts or deceased persons to do 
as much to keep all promises alleged (perhaps falsely) 
by strangers, as to keep promises to relatives. True, 
people often love outsiders more than relatives, but the 
law cannot go into as fine points as that: proof is too 
difficult — natural love and affection — that is, such as 
it is natural, under ordinary circumstances, for all 
men to have, is as much as the law can attempt to 
take into account. 



§ 183] General Law of Contract. 163 

, . „ , It is undoubtedly something of a fiction 

ega c ion. ^^ make "natural love and affection" a 
"consideration", like money, or goods, or services, or 
self-restraint, but many of the greatest improvements 
in the law have been made by just such fictions (190). 
For instance: where people are damaged by others in 
their property and reputation, and come into court 
for redress, the principle of the law is that they must 
not only prove that the acts of which they complain 
really took place, but they must prove that the acts 
were damaging, and just how many dollars' worth; 
yet if a woman proves that she has been slandered 
in the dearest part of her reputation, the law brings 
in a fiction that she has been damaged by the slander, 
whether it fell on willing ears or not, and does not 
require her to prove that she was damaged. If she 
really was damaged, of course the law's assumption 
that she was, is not strictly a fiction. In this sense, 
fiction is a technical term meaning a general principle, 
regardless of whether it is true in any one case or not. 

As there is a tendency in fictions to do harm, it is a 
maxim of the law that fictions must never work injustice 
— that is to say: that when a judge finds that the 
fiction usual in somewhat similar cases, plainly does not 
justly apply to the case in hand, he must not decide 
as if it did. 

183. Mutuality in Now let US consider mutuality in con- 
contracts, tracts. It always ''takes two to make 
a bargain". Contracts must always be mutual, — the 
understanding must be mutual, the consideration must 
be mutual, and the obligation must be mutual. 

First: the understanding must be mutual. If you 
say that to-morrow you will lend me a gun now in the 
hands of a friend, if I will bring a written abstract of 
ten pages of Spencer, and I agree to do it supposing 
you mean Spenser the poet, while you really mean 
Spencer the philosopher, there is no contract between 
us, for our understanding is not mutual. If either 
of us finds out the misunderstanding, he should make 
a reasonable effort to let the other know that there is 



164 The Protection of Rights. [§183 

no contract, so that in case the abstract of the poetry 
should not be a satisfactory substitute for the abstract 
of the philosophy, one may not lose the trouble of 
getting the gun, or the other of writing the abstract. 
It would be reasonable also to see if the parties could 
make the contract that one or the other intended — 
either for the abstract of the philosopher; or, if the 
other would not agree to that, whether he would be 
willing to make the contract he understood — regarding 
the abstract of the poet. 

The second point necessary to the mutuality of the 
contract, is mutuality of consideration — that is toTsay, 
as said before, each side must undertake to give or 
do or not do something, in consideration of the other 
side undertaking to give or do or not do something. 
For instance : if a man renders a service such as helping 
a horse and wagon out of a ditch, without the owner 
asking him to, or agreeing to do or give anything in 
return, he cannot make the owner pay. 

It seems hard not to be paid for valuable volunteer 
services, and any decent man would pay. Yet to 
' admit the principle that volunteer services must be paid 
for, would overwhelm the world with superfluous and 
worthless pretexts of service — like, for instance, needless 
opening of carriage doors, and sweeping of crossings 
already clean. 

As farther instances, suppose A tells B that he will 
do something if B will do som.ething else — that A will 
cook the breakfast if B will get up and light the fire. 
They are not under contract unless B says he will light 
the fire, or straightway does it, and lets A know that 
he has done it. 

Suppose A tells B he will do something, and B there- 
fore expects that he will. A has not contracted to do it, 
but has merely promised. 

184. Law and I^ ^^-^ a contract is more binding than 

Religion. ^ promise (as we have seen), or even than 

an oath. The reason is that an oath is a matter of 
religion, while the law deals only with justice. In 
modern times people know that it is as much a mistake 



§ i86 6] General Law of Contract. 165 

for law to try to handle religion as to handle honor. 
Now, for instance, witnesses need not swear on the 
Bible: they can merely "affirm", if they prefer. 
185. Justice and ^^ might at first seem that in honor, 

*^o"°''' one party to a contract should complete 

his side of the contract even if the other does not, 
because he has promised; but the third point essential 
to the mutuality of a contract is that the obligation 
is mutual. If one side fails in his obligation, that 
releases the other; and it does so in honor, because the 
dishonorable have no claims upon honor. And that 
is not reducing honor to the level of justice, because 
to permit the dishonorable to make claims upon honor, 
would be to reduce honor to injustice. Honor can 
never be contrary to justice. If, then, the dishonorable 
man has no claims, it might seem at first that anyone 
would have a right to deceive or rob him. But tho the 
dishonorable are not entitled to anything beyond 
justice, they are still entitled to justice. 

If one man agrees to pay another if he 
law" wiir^n'of ' ^''' will kill a man or set a house on fire, and 
^"^°''c®' the other agrees, there is a contract, but 

^doing^' ""''"'^' ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^o"^ enforce it, because it is 
against public policy : the legal maxim is : 
''Men may contract, but not to do wrong." In a more 
extreme case : if one party risked his life and liberty to 
commit murder or arson, as there is no wrong in the 
mere payment of money, honor might require the pay- 
ment of even the wages of crime, but the lavv^ would not 
enforce it. 

186 r6; wa ers ^ het, too, has all the characteristics of 

a contract, but the law will not enforce it, 
because betting adds nothing to the wealth of the com- 
munity, as a contract enforced at the expense of the 
community ought to; and because the habit leads a 
man to laziness and improvidence. And looking at the 
mutuality of bets, in the long run they are hardly so 
nearly an even thing that they can claim enforcement 
even on the ground of fairness: for in the long run, 



1 66 The Protection of Rights. [§ i86 6 

those who lose must suffer more than those who 
gain enjoy. This requires a word of explanation: for 
in the long run, of course, bettors' fortunes must aver- 
age the same. Now assume that average to be any 
sum you please — say $10,000. Then, as President 
Hadley * points out, a man who loses $5,000 will lose 
what his family has come to regard as essential com- 
fort, and will suffer seriously, while the man who wins 
will not receive anything that his habits require, but a 
mere superfluity that he will be apt to waste as gamblers 
almost always do. In fact, often so unbalanced are 
the two sides that loss is suicide, and gain a brief 
period of dissipation — evil both ways, tho dispropor- 
tionate, and seldom if ever any real good either way. 

If one party to an alleged contract agrees to do 
something impossible — to drain the ocean or move 
Mount Washington, he is not liable in damages if he 
fails, because an agreement to do an impossibility is 
not a legal consideration. 

But if he agrees to do a reasonable or proper thing, 
and fails because of accident — sickness or a delayed 
train, he must pay damages: the misfortune is his, 
not that of the other party. 
<oc/ . -Th.Ai- Yet of course he can guard against acci- 

186 (^e;, 'The Act - ^ • ^ r • , 

of God or the Pub- dcnts m his agreement, as tor instance, 
lie nemy. carriers of goods generally guard against 

the "Acts of God and the Public Enemy", meaning as 
*'the act of God", any convulsion of nature, like storm 
or flood or earthquake, or probably a sickness not 
brought on by a man's own fault; and as the act of 
the "public enemy", that of any foreign force with 
which we might be at war, or of a pirate at war with all 
mankind. A native mob or insurrection is not in- 
cluded in the legal definition. 

If a man agrees to do all the work he 

seif-p"rlserJationf *^^^ possibly do, for less than w411 keep 

him alive, he should not go on until he 

dies, because it was a promise to commit suicide: that 

is not legal: so he is not bound by contract. Whether 

* "Economics." 



§ 189 General Law of Contract. iGj 

he should go on and take his employer's money until 
he can find another place, and then leave his employer 
in the lurch, is not a question of contract, as there is 
no contract. It is a question of honor, and is brought 
up merely to help define the boundaries of the subject. 

But let us take another case of doubtful 
furnish wisdom* contracts. Suppose a man agrees to work 

for enough to keep him alive, but less than 
his production. It is a contract, because the law does 
not assume it to be either illegal or immoral to make 
a bad bargain, but only foolish; and the law cannot 
attempt to cure people of folly, or guard them against 
the consequences of it. 

189. Contracts which People can get into contracts without 
the law assumes, knowing it, just as they can get into other 
scrapes, through ignorance or stupidity. This seems 
not to agree with the earlier statement that there must 
be a mutual understanding, but in some cases the 
law assumes that there is, and will not listen to any 
evidence to the contrary. For instance : if a servant 
or mechanic or clerk is hired for any period — say a week 
or a month, and continues on without either side saying 
anything, the law assumes a contract for another pe- 
riod of the same length. So if a house is hired for a 
period so brief that a written contract is not neces- 
sary (82 b), continued occupancy after the period, with- 
out anything being said, leads the law to assume a con- 
tract for a second period, and so on indefinitely. 

The law also implies that any person employed to do 
any service shall receive ''what he has deserved",* 
and also that the service shall be performed with due 
skill and faithfulness. If it is not so performed, serv- 
ants cannot get their wages, and would have to pay 
any damages caused by ignorance and carelessness. 

Thellaw may perhaps also be said to assume con- 
tracts that money is to be paid back (on demand unless 
specified) in any of three cases — when borrowed ; when 
spent, either for one's benefit by another with the bene- 

* Quantum meruiU 



1 68 The Protection of Rights. [§ 189 

ficiary's consent or in an emergency; or received from 
any source in behalf of another. 

Similarly, if one takes any article having value, and 
nothing is said about price, one must pay "what it 
was worth",* and the seller cannot recover a price 
beyond that. 

If merchants keep an open account, a contract is im- 
plied that either will pay in case the balance is against 
him, whenever it is struck at the customary time. 

The law assumes these contracts as involving "the 
greatest good of the greatest number". They exist 
only by approval of long experience. 

The law makes a distinction between 

' ^°PP®' these informal contracts and formal ones. 
In fact, it is sometimes hard to tell whether there is a 
contract, or what the law calls an estoppel, that is, 
whether one side or both are not in a position where 
they are stopped (or "estopped", as the lawyers say) 
jrom denying a contract, tho none may have been 
formally entered into. For instance, in some cases of 
renting and employing, if neither party had said any- 
thing until after a second term had been entered upon, 
a court might hold that both were estopped from denying 
the existence of a contract, and would have to act just 
as if there were one. There is another kind of estoppel 
called "estoppel by deed" produced by putting a seal 
on an instrument. After the seal goes on, the signer is 
estopped from contradicting anything said in the instru- 
ment. Otherwise he can contradict any statement that 
the other party has not acted upon. But action by 
the other party also has the effect of an estoppel. 

An assumed contract or an estoppel, seems very 
closely related to a fiction (182). It was said above 
that "in some cases ... a court might hold" that 
there was an estoppel. We were touching upon "the 
glorious uncertainties of the law": tho there are a 
great many exact rules, circumstances vary so much 
that it is hard to tell before a case comes to trial, what 
rules are going to fit it. 

* Quantum valehat. 



§ 193] General Law of Contract. 169 

191. Carelessness Careless people, and the people who 
and Fraud. haunt the borderland between carelessness 
and fraud, often get into positions where they are es- 
topped from denying responsibilities that they did not 
really intend to undertake. 

Carelessness and fraud come pretty close to each other, 
because one who is careless about what he does, is very 
apt to become careless about what he says; and as 
careless people are constantly getting into scrapes, 
they are worse tempted than careful people to try to 
lie out of scrapes. A legal maxim that covers most 
cases where a man can properly be estopped from deny- 
ing an obligation, is that "No man can take advantage 
of his own wrong", and carelessness is a wrong. 

As to fraud, some authorities claim that there is an 
implied contract regarding it — that it is an implied part 
of every contract that there shall be no fraud. But 
that seems drawing it unnecessarily fine. The matter 
seems covered by the general principle of the law — 
to enforce no contract where there is fraud, and always 
to give damages against fraud. 

192. Fraud never J^st what constitutes fraud, however, 
'^sfiied- the law is very careful not to say : because 
human wisdom could not frame a definition broad 
enough to cover all possible cases of fraud, any more 
than all possible cases of any other kind; and even if 
it could cover all cases of fraud heretofore known, the 
ingenuity of the wicked would invent new cases not 
covered by the definition, and so escape. Therefore, 
the court has to determine each case. A fairly intelli- 
gent court can follow the serpent's track more flexibly 
than a rigid definition could. 

No transaction, whether based on contract or not, 
can stand after it is found to be fraudulent, provided 
suit to set it aside is brought within a reasonable time 
of the fraud being discovered — for agreements not under 
seal, in most of our states, six years. 

193. Statutes of A. limit to' the time is secured under 
Limitations again, the Statutes of limitations (82^) which 



170 The Protection of Rights. [§ 193 

were passed largely to protect innocent persons. A 
long time after a piece of wrong-doing, it would be very 
easy to blackmail : for it would then be easy to manu- 
facture evidence that could not be refuted. 

Moreover, after many years, when the person who 
perpetrated the fraud might be dead, it would hardly 
be fair to have somebody coming down on his heirs. 

194. Force vitiates : Fraud is not the only condition that will 
contract. vitiate a contract otherwise good: an as- 
sent obtained by force or threat is no more valid than 
one obtained by fraud. 

Of course fraud and crime take up a great deal of 
time of the courts, and of course the courts (not to 
speak of the police, jails, reformatories and prisons) 
cost the taxpayers a great deal of money. Yet if every- 
body were honest, we could not get along without 
courts, unless everybody were wise too : for 

195. Courts needed various sorts of unwisdom often tangle up 
IfmlcVls""''""'' people's rights so that they have to go 
against Fraud. {^to court to find out what their rights are. 
[%usion%t ''" Take a case of what is called in law 
struction 'and '* confusion " of ouc pcrsou's materials with 

friendly suits. , -, , - / , .- ^. 

another person s labor — a man building a 
house for another, or a woman making an expensive 
frock, may get it all wrong and spoil a lot of good mate- 
rial, and yet suppose that it was being done right, per- 
haps because the owner of the materials may have failed 
to give clear directions. Again, intricate questions con- 
stantly arise over the meaning and effect of old contracts, 
or of provisions of wills, as well as of statutes passed by 
legislative bodies ; and as somebody must put a working 
construction on them, that is generally done by the 
courts. Honest people are getting into disputes over 
such matters all the time, and many suits are, even in 
fact as in name, "friendly" — simply to get a matter 
settled in one way or the other, when the parties do 
not care which way. Such cases are perhaps most 
frequent when people are acting for others — executors 
for estates, guardians for minors, trustees for corpora- 



§ 197] General Law of Contract. 171 

tions; and to avoid liability themselves, they must be 
sure to act legally, so they need an authoritative decree 

196. Contracts ^^^ ^^^ Contracts are made by people 

when parties do face to face." many are made by mail, tele- 
not meet. graph and even telephone. 

A man making an offer in a letter, is not bound by 
it before the other party has posted his letter of accept- 
ance. Most judges have decided that the acceptor can- 
not revoke (say by special messenger or telegram) be- 
tween posting his letter and the receipt of it by the 
man who made the offer, but there have not been 
enough cases tried since the telegraph came into gen- 
eral use, for the subject to have been so thoroughly 
argued that all judges are now agreed. 

Tho the offerer has a privilege of revoking until his 
offer is accepted, the acceptor should not have the same 
privilege until his acceptance is received, because, for 
many reasons, the general principle of law is that a 
contract is made when both parties consent to the same 
thing. It is of course important to fix the time of 
this consent. A man may write a letter of acceptance 
without being at all sure that he will post it, but post- 
ing it is the last thing he can do with it, and when 
he does that, it is reasonable to conclude that his 
mind is then made up, and consequently, that at that 
instant the parties are agreed, hence that the contract 
is made, and therefore that neither can revoke. Another 
argument is that the proposer has made the mail and 
telegraph operators his agents (214) to receive the ac- 
ceptance, and that consequently, when it is delivered 
to them, it is legally delivered to him. 

And yet this view does not seem so free from doubt 
that it ought to be finally considered as the law. There 
is certainly room for a great deal more argument, as is 
shown by the fact that judges are not 
evoiution.'^^ '^ ^" 3^^"^ absolutely agreed, and the only safe 
way is to make a proposition subject to 
the proposer receiving word of its acceptance by a 
specified time. 



172 The Protection of Rights. [§ 197 

And doubt has certainly at some time covered 
most questions that are now clearly settled: nearly 
all the matters that seem very simple ones to us, 
were by no means as simple to our ancestors. For in- 
stance, take as simple a thing as regard for human life. 
When a sovereign kills a subject who displeases him, our 
ancestors, even as late as Henry VIII. — yes, as late as 
James II., would have differed as to whether it was a 
legal execution or a murder. But now, if our Presi- 
dent or one of our governors were deliberately to kill 
an unoffending man, it would be a murder; and even 
as to the sheriff who hangs or electricutes a man nowa- 
days, a great many people think that any voluntary 
killing of a human being, except in immediate defence 
of one's self or another, is wrong, and will some day 
be against the law. 



CHAPTER XV. 



LAW OF CONTRACTS CONCERNING PERSONAL PROPERTY. 

So much for the general principles of Contract; and 
as to our last few words on the uncertainty and evolu- 
tion of law — that is a topic to which we shall have to 
revert more than once. Now let us examine into some 
of the specific laws of different kinds of contracts, be- 
ginning with such an every-day matter as selling and 
delivering property. It is not always as simple as we 
are apt to think. 

Suppose I have a horse and want you to buy him. 
You say you will give me $ioo for him, and will bring it 
next day; and I say: ''All right, I'll send him to 
you"; and we separate. Suppose I change my mind. 
Can you oblige me to sell him ? * No : for under the 
Statute of Frauds (82 6) a contract for 
198. Sale and De- over $50 (later legislation varies it in the 
(ai 'as gener- different statcs from $30 to $200) must be 
ally affected by put in Writing, at Icast unless there was de- 

the Statute of t- r , i • i r 

Frauds, livery ot money or somethmg else from 

one side to the other, or some other part- 
performance. Here neither horse nor money was de- 
livered. 

Let us note in passing that the law also requires to 

* While I have had to realize the failure of the dialogue form 
in which the earlier editions of this book were written, it seems 
so peculiarly adapted to the topics of this chapter, that I have 
ventured to retain some traces of it for them. 

173 



174 ^^^ Protection of Rights. [§ 198 a 

be written, or partly performed, all contracts relating to 
real estate (except a lease for a year or less in New 
York — in some states, three years or less), or to becom- 
ing responsible for somebody else, or making a trustee 
personally responsible for the benefit of a trust estate 
(218), or to something to be done more than a year 
afterwards, or where the consideration on either or both 
sides is a promise to marry. 

The law requires these formalities, because the obli- 
gation of Contract is so great, and the necessity of 
performing contracts, and of the law's enforcing them, 
so important, that it has been found wise to make 
people cautious in entering into contracts, and to 
guard people from getting into them too easily. More- 
over, where contracts are specially important or pecu- 
liar, the law wants better evidence of their existence 
and nature, than mere memory of spoken words. 

Probably no statutes have ever had wider effects than 
the Statutes of Frauds. But it is a most instructive 
comment on the uncertainty of legislative wisdom 
that many good lawyers think these statutes have en- 
couraged more fraud than they have prevented. 
198 rw. by Part To return to our contracts in selling 

Payment, ^^id delivering property : if you had given 

me $5 on account of the horse, he would then be under 
contract of sale, the $5 being consideration to bind 
that contract. I could not then sell him to an37'body 
but you, and give you back your $5. Thus for personal 
propert}^ part payment will bind in the absence of 
writing. 

If the matter in hand, instead of a horse, were a thou- 
sand bushels of oats which we had agreed upon a sale of, 
and you had paid me for only a bushel, our contract 
would be good for all. 

If you had paid for none, but I had put a bushel in 
your buggy, part delivery would be as good as part 
payment. 

But coming back to the horse, suppose I had been 
too good-natured, and endorsed a friend's note (163 &), 
and were to find on my w^ay home that the sheriff 



§ 2oo] Law of Personal-Property Contracts. 175 

had taken the horse to pay the note after you had 
paid the $5. Is he still my horse? Yes, he was mine 

198 re;. Prior Lien. "^"^^^ contract of sale. But if the entire 
price had been paid before the sheriff took 
the horse, the sheriff took your horse. It would be 
necessary to fix the time of both events. But that 
would not be easy, and as "possession is nine points 
of the law", the outcome would probably be that the 
sheriff would hold the horse, and I would have to 
return your money. 

Should the horse be killed while in the seller's pos- 
session, it would be the buyer's loss only if title had 
actually passed — if, for instance, either party had said, 
without contradiction, words to the effect that it was 
the buyer's horse, and that the seller had a claim on 
the buyer for the rest of the money. But until such an 
arrangement is definitely made, or until the horse is 
delivered, it would still be only a contract of sale. 
But the buyer has a first claim on him for any 
money he may have advanced before getting posses- 
sion. 

Such a claim is usually called a lien, which means in 
law a right to sell property to recover some claim 
against it. Next to mortgages and judgments, the 
most frequent liens are those of mechanics against 
things — especially houses, that they have made or 
repaired. 

Now to return to the horse-trade. Suppose the horse 

had been paid for, but there was not time to make a good 

delivery before the sheriff took him, how 

199. No one can sell is the buver to get him? The law would 
more title than he • t,- j. ^1, -u -l. 1 • 
has, give mm to the buyer, wherever he is. 

The sheriff can only sell whatever title the 

seller had in him, and after he was paid for, the seller 

had none. 

That would of course be hard on the man w^ho had 

bought him from the sheriff, but he would have a right 

to get back the money he had paid the sheriff. 

200. Possession I^ ^^^ $ioo had been paid, the horse 
and ownership. would be the buyer's property, as against 



176 The Protection of Rights. [§ 200 

all previous claims, except a registered chattel mort- 
gage (163 e), even tho he remained with the seller. 

If he burned up in the stable before the seller had 
time to deliver him, it would be the buyer's loss, but 
the seller could probably still collect insurance on him, 
if he had any, because policies generally cover "goods 
sold and not delivered", but if the buyer had paid, 
and the seller should collect insurance, he would have 
to pay it to the buyer. 

But suppose farther that the seller had paid some 
bills with the $100 on the way home, and the sheriff 
had said: *'Well, if you've just sold this horse for 
$100, show me the money: I'll take that", and upon 
the seller's failing to show the money, the sheriff had 
said that he did not believe the seller had sold the 
horse at all, and the sheriff had taken him and sold 
him. He would still be the buyer's horse, no matter 
in whose hands the sheriff might have placed him, and 
the buyer would have a right to take him wherever he 
could find him — not to take him by force, however: 
because, as already said, no man can legally use force 
except in self-defence, or in arresting for crime: in 
2f^. Q . other cases, he must appeal to the law. 

not secure posses- The buyer could enter another man's 
sion by force. stable to get his horse, but only without 

force. If force is used, it must be by due process of 
law. 

Suppose the seller had not paid the bills with the 
hundred dollars, and when the buyer sent for the horse 
and found him gone, he were to prefer the money to 
the horse with the trouble of following him up through 
the sheriff's hands, and so he were to ask for the hundred 
dollars back, would the lav/ give it him? Perhaps 
the seller ought to, as he would have got the buyer into 
the scrape, but the law would not. The buyer could 
reasonably try to get his horse, but it would be absurd 
to try to get the seller's money. It is now the seller's 
hundred dollars, and it was the buyer's horse that the 
sheriff took. 



§ 202 a] Law of Personal-Property Contracts. 177 

„rto n !■ A If the seller had had time, before meet- 
202, Delivery and . ^^ 1 -rr , 1 .1 1 ^ .1 

acceptance complete mg the sherin, to Send the horse to the 

ownership. buyer's stables, tho the buyer had not paid, 

the horse would have been the buyer's, and the seller 
would have had a good claim against the buyer for $100. 
202 (a) Deiiveru ^^® Same would have been the case if 
to agent or carrier the Seller had givcu the horsc to the ser- 
^^° ' vant or any other agent of the buyer 

before the buyer paid for him. 

If the seller had started him for the buyer's stable by 
the seller's own servant, and the sheriff had met him, he 
would, unless paid for, still have been the seller's horse. 

We have seen then that the ways in which the transfer 
of ownership of personal property can be effected, are 
by paying for it, or delivering it on the buyer's premises, 
or other premises named by the buyer, or delivering 
it to him, or to a person properly acting for him. 

Accordingly, in shipping goods, they become the 
buyer's upon his paying for them, or upon delivery 
to a carrier named by him, or to any common or public 
carrier, unless he had ordered a different one. Probably 
there would be an exception to the last rule in cities 
where dealers generally deliver the goods they sell, and 
sometimes do so by public carriers. Probably a court 
would hold that a dealer in goods usually delivered at 
the house, is bound to deliver at the house unless he 
warns the buyer that they go at his risk. 

Upon delivery of unpaid-for goods, tho the seller no 
longer owns them, he has in place of them, a claim on 
the buyer. He should not deliver them unless he 
thinks the claim is practically worth more to him than 
the goods. 

If the buyer named one carrier, and the seller de- 
livered to another, the goods would be the seller's until 
the buyer received them, unless it was impossible to 
deliver them to the buyer's carrier, and the seller had 
used proper diligence to get as good a one as possible 
in his place. 

In such a case, however, if the goods had been un- 



178 The Protection of Rights. [§202 a 

reasonably delayed or damaged or overcharged for 
freight, the buyer would not be bound to receive them. 
He would, however, be bound to pay the charges of a 
carrier he did not select, unless excessive; if excessive, 
he would have the choice of refusing the goods or of 
claiming the excessive charges from the seller. 
203. Conditional Suppose the buyer had not seen the 

sale. horse, but had only said: "I like your 

description so well that if he comes up to it, I'll take 
him", still he could not be the buyer's before he had 
accepted him, even if the seller's groom delivered him, 
and the buyer's groom accepted him, unless the buyer 
had given his groom special authority to judge and 
accept him. But if, after hearing the seller's descrip- 
tion, the buyer, without seeing the horse, had said: 
"All right, I'll take him", he would have had to keep 
him unless he was ready to say the description had not 
been just. 

If the buyer had said: "I'm going away, but I'll 
come and see him within a month", and the seller had 
said: "All right, I'll keep him for you", it is a com- 
plex question whether the seller would have been under 
contract to keep him. What really passed between the 
parties was that the owner gave an option, 
'^ '°"' and the question is how much that option 

was worth. If it was worth more than $50, the agree- 
ment to keep the horse, and agreement to go and see 
him, do not make a contract, without writing or pay- 
ment on account. We must distinguish between an 
option and a contract of sale. Now an option has value : 
one party has all the advantage, and generally he should 
pay for that advantage. He can buy or not: if values 
change, it is a case of heads, he wins; tails, the other 
loses. But in a contract of sale, the chances are even, 
if other things are even : for change of value before the 
contract is completed, is as apt to be on one side as 
the other. Accordingly, the mere right to btiy goods if 
wanted (or leave them alone if not wanted), is often 
matter of bargain and sale — quite possibly more often 
than goods themselves, especially in some classes of 



§ 2o6] Law of Personal-Property Contracts. 179 

goods. In grain, perhaps the option sales amount to 
more than the sales of actual goods. The same may- 
be true of some stocks. 

Suppose there had been a defect in the 
SbTdTsciofed? ^orse. Was the seller bound to tell of it? 
If questioned, he must answer honestly, 
if he answers at all. But he has a perfect right to say: 
''There is the property ; judge it for yourself." Here ap- 
plies the maxim of law: "Let the buyer look out for 
his own interests."* This applies specially to horse- 
trades, but also to all trades where the buyer has full 
opportunity to examine. Some very honest people often 
refuse to say anything about their wares — especially 
their horses (For now and then, perhaps, a man can 
sell a horse without losing his honesty), because they 
fear that there may be defects of which they themselves 
are not aware. 

Yet the principle of refusing to disclose a defect 
when it is known, is not good, but it is like something 
discussed before: it is more in the field of honor than 
in the field of law. It would be very hard to enforce 
laws requiring it, and it is unwise for the law to attempt 
more than it can do : because failure is very apt to 
lessen the respect in which it is important that the 
law be held. 

But there are cases in which a man is bound to tell 
the whole story: an employee or a person acting for 
another in any capacity, is always bound to tell his 
principal all essential facts. For instance, if a gentle- 
man sends his coachman to look at a dealer's horse, 
the coachman is bound to tell all he finds, while the 
dealer is not. 

A seller also, if he warrants his wares, 
arrany. j-Q-^gt^ in self-defence, tell how far he war- 
rants them. Whether the contract of sale implies a 
contract of warranty, is a very complicated question. 
In ordinary cases, the two contracts are separate, and 

* Caveat emptor. 



i8o The Protection of Rights. [§206 

extra price is often paid for warranty; but in danger- 
ous cases, like drugs and food, the courts would prob- 
ably imply warranty with sale. Of course, as often said, 
the law insists that there shall be no fraud, but cannot 
always insist on things being usable for the purposes that 
they are sold for. That point opens up an enormous 
number of mixed and delicate questions. Probably 
the farthest the law could go in any case, would be to 
punish fraud if proven. 

A large and interesting class of contracts closely 
allied to warranty, includes those of suretyship — guar- 
anteeing that the responsibilities of another 
ureys ip. person shall be performed. This, of course, 
includes endorsement, which we have already treated 
(163 h). Even where one has had no real interest in a 
piece of negotiable paper, if he puts his name on the 
back of it, the law assumes a right in any subsequent 
holder, on giving prompt legal notice, to claim its value 
from him. He becomes surety for it. 

An endorsement is in writing; but if, in our horse 
case, the buyer had said that his finances were not in 
good shape, and a friend standing by had said: "Well, 
if it turns out that he can't pay you, I'll help him and 
see you made good," the speaker w^ould not have been 
bound. Under the Statute of Frauds (82 h) any ''con- 
tract to answer for the debt, default or miscarriage of 
another", must be in writing, and signed at least by 
the party who may have to answer. 

Suretyship and warranty shade into 
another large class of contracts embracing 
all kinds of insurance. Fidelity insurance is especially 
like suretyship, but also fire, marine, accident, life, 
plate-glass and all the rest, are of course of the nature 
of warranty; but the warrant extends, unless otherwise 
agreed in the policy, not necessarily to the full amount 
of the policy, but only to the value of the property 
at the time of loss. Hence the desirability of keeping 
the policy small, or having it declare that the amount 
insured for shall, in case of loss, be taken as the value 
of the property. Life-insurance companies, however, 



§ 209 ^] Law of Personal-Property Contracts. i8i 

are always liable for the full amount of their policies. 

- , We come now to the wide questions of 

Bailment, from the French bailler, to de- 
liver. That is the law term for placing movable prop- 
erty in the possession of somebody not the owner, or 
for the relations arising from such placing of any prop- 
erty. It will be noticed that that is different from the 
delivery which changes ownership. In bailment, the 
owner and receiver are called, respectively, bailor and 
bailee. Now suppose in our horse case, the seller had 
delivered the horse to a railroad comipany, and they 
had failed to deliver him to the buyer: if he had been 
killed by an accident on their road, they would have 
had to pay the seller for him, unless the accident was 
caused by ''the Act of God or the Public Enemy". 

Very early the law made common carriers responsible 
for the acts of highwaymen, because they were so 
often in collusion with them (202a). We are defence- 
less against "the Act of God", but the owner would 
have a chance of recovering the horse's value if he 
were taken by the public enemy: for in the case of 
war, if the government were to get an indemnity, it 
would perhaps pay such private claims; and in the 
case of riot and insurrection, the citizen has a good 
claim against the state for not preventing the trouble 
or suppressing it before damage is done. 

For any other matter sent by freight or express, the 
company's liability would be the same as for the horse. 
' The liabilities of common carriers are 
"entkinds^o/goods. ^^^ Same for all sorts of property, except 
that they are not responsible for deteriora- 
tion in perishable goods like meat and fruit, unless 
there is special agreement regarding time of delivery. 
They can protect themselves by charging different rates 
for articles that differ in durability or strength, and 
they may perhaps altogether refuse extra-hazardous 
articles — like dynamite, tho they do not if they can get 
paid enough. 

Probably if a railway company sells a ticket presum- 



1 82 The Protection of Rights. [§ 209 a 

ably for a particular train, it is bound to provide a 
seat. This would hardly hold, however, where a num- 
ber of tickets are sold to be used at pleasure — com- 
mutation tickets for instance. A passenger who can- 
not find a seat in a common car, may take one in a 
parlor-car or a sleeping-car without extra payment, 
until one in an ordinary car is vacant. 
209 (b). "Common A " common carrier " is a carrier for pay, 
Garner-' defined. ^ ^f virtually anything that offers. 

If one travels and checks his trunk, whether the 
company is liable for any amount of value in the trunk, 
is a very doubtful case, and has often been decided 
each way. The weight of the decisions now makes the 
companies liable for ordinary non-business baggage, even 
up to the outfits of sportsmen, and most elaborate cos- 
tumes of ladies. 

Handbags are at the risk of owners, so would be 
valuables not properly constituting personal baggage in 
trunks. 

The carrier's responsibility for horses is weakened 
(tho not always destroyed) by their being in charge of 
the owner or his agent. 

209 (c) Limiting Confusiou in the law has resulted from 
Liability without differences of opinion as to whether a com- 
contrac . pany can relieve itself from liability by 

printing on tickets (as it always does) that its liability 
shall be restricted to a certain amount. While that 
cannot make a contract unless the passenger agrees 
to it, the companies' lawyers claim that in accepting 
the ticket, he does agree. The question ought to be 
settled by statute, but probably the companies influ- 
ence the legislatures not to settle it in one way, and 
fear of constituents prevents the legislatures from 
settling it the other way. 

If the passenger has not even read what was printed 
on the ticket, the companies claim that one takes the 
ticket on his own risk, and ought to read it — in short, 
that the ticket is a sort of bill-of-lading. 
209 (d), Bui-of- A bill-of-lading is a carrier^s receipt for 
Lading, goods. These were issued long before 



§ 209 /] Law of Personal Property Contracts. 183 

passenger-tickets were — even when people used to 
travel only by horse and carriage; so the law of bills- 
of-lading was evolved and settled long before there 
were any passenger-tickets. A man consigning goods 
to a carrier is bound by anything on his bill-of-lading 
that is not against the law; therefore, if he is wise, 
he will know what is on it before accepting it. Per- 
haps the judges would decide that passenger-tickets 
are to be put on the same footing as bills-of-lading, 
were it not that when a queue of people is waiting 
before a ticket-window, and the train is soon to start, 
it would not do for each one to have to read his ticket 
before accepting it. Moreover, as railroads are chartered 
for the public convenience, they should not be per- 
mitted to restrict it needlessly by their one-sided 
alleged contracts. The general tendency of the courts, 
however, is very properly in favor of the shipper, as 
the companies are too apt to act as masters of the 
situation. 

209(e). Hinng ^^^ "^^^^ another case of one party's 

responsibility for returning the property 
of another: if the railroad company were hiring the 
horse, and paying for the use of him instead of carrying 
him somewhere for pay, it would still be responsible 
to return him unless prevented by the act of God or 
the public enemy: he becomes for the time of hiring, 
the company's horse, and it undertakes to return him 
(or his value) when the time of hiring is past. 

If while he was hired, a thief had taken him from 
the stable, the hirer would have to find him; or if the 
hirer could not find him, or if the thief drove him to 
death, the hirer would be responsible to pay. 
209(f). The Law There is an exception to this responsi- 
does not require bility, wlicrc, at the time of hiring, some 

impossibilities. i-,- • , -i • •. • , -, 

condition exists making it, m the nature 
of things, impossible to return the hired article — for 
instance, if, when the horse is delivered, he has a mor- 
tal disease that carries him off while he is in the bailee's 
hands. But if he catches grip while in the bailee's 
stable, that is the bailee's risk. 



184 The Protection of Rights. [§ 209 / 

If he is vicious and runs away and kills himself, if 
the bailee could prove that he was habitually vicious, 
the bailee would not be responsible; and if the bailor 
knew it (as in that case he presumably would), the 
bailee could even get damages for any harm the horse 
might do him. 

If he is burned up, that is the bailee's risk, too, but 
of course bailees can insure against it, or bailors can 
when bailees are not reliable. 

The same principle of liability holds for all sorts of 
property, if left for the bailee's use. 
_^„, , „ ., . If anything is received without pay — 

209 (g), Bailment ^ ^ r ,^ i -t , • r • 

without consid- solcly lor the bailor s convenience — tor m- 
^^^*-^°"- vStance, jewelry or a picture that one does 

not want to store with ordinary furniture, the bailee is 
under no responsibility, except for the grossest careless- 
ness. Similarly, if, as is often the case, an express com- 
pany deadheads a private package for a man who gives 
the company much business, the company is responsible 
only for gross negligence: there has been no considera- 
tion making a contract to deliver safely. But if, for 
instance, a bailee had. borrowed a horse, the bailment 
'would have been for his own benefit, and he would have 
been responsible — as responsible as if hiring, and m.ore 
responsible in honor, as the owner gets no benefit ; and 
accordingly, a judge and jury would be more apt to 
throw all the points against the borrower. 
209 (h). Liability Supposc the borrower had gone off for a 
of inniieepers. driving tour, and stopped at a country inn, 
the landlord putting the horse in his stable. Would 
his responsibility to the borrower be the same as the 
borrower's when the horse was in his stable? Prob- 
ably it would be stronger. Generally an innkeeper's 
responsibility for the property of his guests has been 
the same as that of a common carrier: perhaps, tho, it 
may be doubted Vs^hether this responsibility would ex- 
tend to the stable. 

Yet vv^hile the early law made by the decisions of the 
judges, was as stated, many statutes have been made by 
legislatures to exem.pt the landlord from responsibility — 



§ 209 '^'] -^^^ ^f Personal-Property Contracts. 185 

for instance, for jewelry and valuables unless these are 
specially put into his hands, provided he gives notice 
to that effect. In some states, to relieve himself of 
responsibility, he m.ust put such things into an iron 
safe. Perhaps this general tendency to relieve him 
of responsibility would influence judges as far as the 
stable. 

Approximately, the innkeeper's responsibility indi- 
cates the responsibility of all other bailees for pay, tho 
as he was one of the earliest bailees, and as in early 
times the law could take much less account of circum- 
stances than it learned to in the course of its evolution, 
the law is rather harder on the innkeeper than on most 
bailees. 

The rigor of the common law with innkeepers arose 
from its having taken shape at a time when innkeepers 
were apt to be in collusion with highwaymen and other 
thieves. 

The innkeeper is also obliged to keep his place in 
sanitary condition and furnish wholesome food. 
■209 Oh Pledge. Supposc the owucr of our horse had 

borrowed fifty dollars, and had left the 
often-aforesaid horse as security : he is not for the time 
as much at the risk of the lender of the money (called 
the pledgee) as he would be if he hired or even bor^^owed. 

As a pledge, the lender must return him in good order, 
if he will permit ; but if he gets sick and dies, the pledgee 
is not responsible, as he vv^ould be in hiring. It must 
be admitted, however, that horse cases are harder than 
most other cases: a horse is more apt than a load of 
stone, for instance, to get sick and die, and the diffi- 
culty of horse cases is one 'of the reasons why I have 
used them. More changes can be rung on a horse 
than on a load of stone. 

Courts hold people regularly receiving pledges, such as 
pawnbrokers and stockbrokers, to very strict accounta- 
bility, yet if a horse dies, or anything goes wrong with 
other perishable property in a bailee's hands, even when 
hired, and the judge were to tell the jury that in strict 
law the bailee was responsible, and that they must fix 



1 86 The Protection of Rights. [§ 209 -J 

the value, they would be apt to fix it pretty low. The 
situation is one of the many vs^here "the glorious uncer- 
tainties of the law" are specially uncertain. But yet 
there is a general principle that runs through it all, and 
209 ov Genemt which would influence both judge and 
principle of Lia- jury. The law of bailment has been 
biiity of Bailees. QyQiyQf^ frotQ such Varying circumstances 
that, in many departments, it has hardly settled down 
according to principles. It seems tending, tho, to 
make the liability — the amount of care required from 
the bailee, vary with the advantage he derives from the 
bailment : if he gets no advantage, as in taking to accom- 
modate the bailor, he is responsible only if he is grossly 
negligent; but if he gets an advantage, as in borrowing, 
or hires an advantage worth paying for, as in ordinary 
hiring, he must take good ordinary care, and that 
will not always save him ; but when we come to bailees 
who make their living from their bailments, such as 
common carriers, innkeepers and holders of pledges, 
they must take all possible care, and even then they 
are not always safe in case of loss. 

Where a party admits that he. owes 
210. Ten er. something, but there is a dispute about 

the amount, it is wise promptly to make a tender of 
what he thinks he ought to pay. Otherwise he could 
not claim the performance of any of the agreements 
that his opponent hesitates about ; and in some states, 
if a seller tries to back out of a contract for goods, 
and the buyer makes him a tender, the goods become 
the bu3^er's property at that moment, even despite the 
seller's wish, and only the amount to be paid remains 
to be adjudicated. 

Moreover, if the court should decide that more was 
owed than had been tendered, if no tender has been 
made, the debtor v/ould have to pay interest on any 
sum the court decides due, and the costs of the suit. 
If a tender has been made, the debtor would not have 
to pay interest up to the amount tendered, or any costs, 
unless the court should decide more owed than the tender. 



§2ii] Law of Personal-Property Contracts. 187 

« 

But in some cases the acceptance of any tender has 
been held to discharge the debt. 

A check is not a legal tender. The check 
monitin!"'^'°^ might not be good. Pennies are legal 
tender only up to twenty-five cents. Sil- 
ver small change is not legal tender for over ten dol- 
lars. Silver dollars are legal tender for any amount, 
in the absence of contract to the contrary. Silver 
certificates might be expected to be legal tender only 
for public dues. Gold English sovereigns are the best 
money in the world, but foreign money is not legal 
tender. Legal tender in America is only American 
money — copper, nickel and small silver only in the 
small amounts stated, and gold coin, silver dollars 
and government legal-tender notes in unlimited amounts, 
tho contract can be made against all but gold. 

The reasons why some kinds of money are legal ten- 
der, and others not, are: that a debtor should not 
be able to force a creditor to take a cartload of copper 
for a thousand-dollar debt, or a cartload of silver for 
a ten -thousand-do liar one, if the creditor has not been 
wise enough to contract against either; much less should 
he be obliged to take a check that it is possible the 
bank may refuse. So it is necessary for the law to 
determine what he shall take. This is done by Con- 
2\0(b). Deter- grcss, of coursc : as the Constitution gives 

mined by Congress. CongrCSS the Solc pOWCr tO Coin moncy, it 

alone can say what is money. 

The Supreme Court has virtually decided that the 
power to coin money includes the power to print paper 
money, or at least that the power to raise money in- 
cludes that of raising it by issuing legal-tender notes; 
but many of the best lawyers still think it does not. 

211. Contractual A minor is incapable of making con- 

Disabilities, tracts, except for necessities. Formerly, 

and perhaps still in some states, married women can- 
not contract, and everywhere idiots are unable to. 

If, for instance, a minor's doctor recommends him to 
ride horseback, and he refuses to pay for a horse he 



1 88 The Protection of Rights. [§211 

has hired, a jury would have to decide whether, con- 
sidering his health and circumstances, the horse could 
be called a necessity. Should the jury agree that the 
212. Some limits ^^^rse was a necessity, as there was no con- 
of Quantum tract (the hirer being a minor), the owner 

^^^' still could recover for the hire, on the 

ground that anybody who supplies a minor with a 
necessity, may recover ''what it was worth" — Quantum 
valehat (189). This principle of quantum valebat is 
not applied only to supplying minors altho they can- 
not contract, but it applies when anything really making 
212 ra;. Enrich- an "enrichment" is supplied, even by mis- 
'^^"^' _ take. Tho in ordinary language a minor 

or anybody is not "enriched" by riding a horse, he is 
in the legal sense, if it does him good. Even if it does 
not, he would still have to pay for it, if good judges 
had recommended it. 

But if he had been supplied with something harmful, 
as too much whiskey, for instance, the seller could not 
recover. 

The question of quantum valehat is constantly aris- 
ing where things have been furnished not under con- 
tract, but by mistake. Once money was paid an English 
admiral by mistake. He went on a long spree with it, 
and successfully defended a demand for its return, 
on the ground that it had not "enriched" him any. 
There are many good judges however, who doubt if 
that was good law. 

If an owner who had agreed to sell anything, wanted 
to back out on the ground that there was no contract 
because the buyer was a minor, probably the courts 
would not excuse him if the minor sued through a 
guardian for enforcement. The principle would seem 
to be in accordance with the maxim that ' ' no man has 
a right to take advantage of his own wrong". The 
seller in the supposed case, being of age, is presumed 
to know what he has, and has not, a right to do. He 
has no right to contract with a minor (unless for a 
necessity, under his health and circumstances) and 



§ 213] Law of Personal Property Contracts. 189 

therefore cannot take advantage of his being a minor, 
to set aside the contract. 

But suppose for some reason which we need not 
take the trouble to invent, a minor wishes to set aside 
a contract, has he not been as wrong to go into it as 
the adult: so should he have any more right to set it 

aside? The law is pretty decided that he 
Sd'slheweaf"" should. It is the special province of the 

law, so far as it can, to protect the weak. 
The minor is in special danger of being led by adults 
into unfair contracts, so he rightly has the power to 
set them aside. The adult, on the other hand, is left 
to take care of himself, and is all the better for the 
responsibility. True, as already said, the law cannot 
attempt to discriminate between strong men and weak 
ones, but it can tell the difference between people over 
twenty-one years old, and those under. 



J CHAPTER XVI. 

/ 

( LAW OF CONTRACTS FOR PERSONAL RELATIONS. 

If A, being away from his stable, sells 
gency. ^ horse to B, and on coming home is met 

by his groom, who says: "Here's a hundred dollars 
that I just got from C for that horse you told me to 
sell, and he has taken him away", whose horse he is 
depends upon whose horse he was when the groom 
sold him to C If A had sold him to B before the 
gToom sold him to C, he was B's. A could not give C 
a'ny title to him that A did not have himself. But 
if A's man had sold him to C before A sold him to B, 
A had no title to sell B . 

Author- ^'^ man could give B as good a title as 
i zed acts bind A had, if A had made him his agent to do 

stantlally ."* "Sell that horse when you can get $ioo for 
him", but had only said substantially: "I think I'll sell 
that horse when I can get $ioo for him", he had not 
made the groom his agent to sell the horse, and no 
agent can do more than he is authorized to do, unless 
the principal has, carelessly or otherwise, given the 
third party good reason to believe that the agent had 
the necessary authority. 

Again, suppose A had given instructions to sell the 
horse for $ioo, and the groom had given C an option 
(203) on him for a month. A's instructions did not 
give the groom the right to tie the horse up for a month, 
so that A could not take a better price, unless the 
groom was sure of the sale at the end; or perhaps 

190 



§ 214 c] Law of Contracts for Personal Relations. 191 

for that long, even if he was sure, because the horse 
might get sick or die meanwhile. 

But if A had said: ''Do anything you please with 
him that will put me to no expense, but don't bring 
me less than $100", that would probably have given 
the groom a right to give an option, if he honestly ex- 
pected that it would lead to a sale; yet it was rather 
risky. Most courts would probably hold such an 
option good, if the consideration for it were good. 
2)A(b). Agent ^^ ^^^ Consideration for the option on 

liable fof exceed- the horse was held to be eood and thp 

ing his authority. ,• •. ^r 111 , \ / 

Option itself were held not good because 
the agent had exceeded his authority, the remedy 

could only be through damages by suing the agent • 

if he had enough to pay with : a principal can be sued 
only for what he has authorized an agent to do, or 
that which through negligence he had permitted ' his 
agent to assume authority to do, after having placed 
the agent in a position in which he might deceive the 
public. 

2H(c). Pnncipai As already intimated, an agent can do 
tl}"dpany%T'' ^^^ ^^^^ ^"^^s principal has given a third 
good reason to be- party good rcasou to bcHeve the ap-ent 
neve authorized. ^^^ '^^^^ authorized to do : for instance, 
if A had said to C so lately that A could not be rea- 
sonably supposed to change his mind: "I always let 
my man buy and sell my horses as he thinks best: I'm 
so buried in my books that I don't attempt to know 
anything about the stable" — if A said that, he would 
be estopped (190) from denying it to C, after C had 
acted on the faith of it. 

Nor is the principle of estoppel the only one or the 
main one, that forces a m^an to abide by the authorized 
acts of his agent. 

Now in the horse case, suppose A was not the real 
owner, but merely the agent for the owner, and the 
owner disapproved A's selling him, whether the court 
would enforce the sale, would depend, as already said, 
upon whether the owner had led the buyer to beHeve 
that A had the authority; or if not, upon whether A 



ig2 The Protection of Rights. [§ 214 c 

had exceeded his authority, or whether, merely, the 
owner had changed his mind after giving A authority. 
A principal is always bound by the act of his agent, 
unless the agent exceeds his authority. 
214 w. Agency There is also Agency by necessity. A 

through necessity, ^jfg ^^^ children are a husband and 

father's agents to supply the family with necessities 
according to his means, and so can render him liable; 
or if in accident a bystander takes the place of a dis- 
abled agent, the principal is liable for consequences. 
Should a man running a launch become ill, and a pas- 
senger take the wheel, if he wrongly ran down another 
boat, the owner of the launch would be liable, tho he 
had not engaged him. It is an old maxim of the law 
that he who does an act through another, does it him- 
self.* 

. ^ ^^^^^^_ If the owner of the horse had said: 
not make an ij "Sell him for $ioo", and the agent had 

profit for himself. ^^^^ j^-^ ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ 

no right to keep the difference: an agent is simply his 
principal's self, as far as business between them is 
concerned. 

To leave horse-trading for a moment, suppose an 
agent were sent to buy a piece of land on which the 
principal was going to make an improvement that 
would greatly raise the value of land in the neighbor- 
hood, and the agent bought some neighboring land on 
speculation himself. He could not keep it if his prin- 
cipal wanted it at the price. An agent in a transac- 
tion simply represents his principal in everything con- 
nected with it. It would be the agent's duty to tell 
his principal about the neighboring land: so far as 
everything connected with a principal's business is con- 
cerned, an agent's mind should be simply his princi- 
pal's mind, and his pocket his principal's pocket. 

Should an agent receive bribes to buy from particular 
people, the law would give them to his principal, and 
in some cases would punish the agent. Cooks and coach- 

* Qui facit per aliutn, facit per se. 



§ 214 g] -^^^ of Contracts for Personal Relations. 193 

men acting as agents for the purchase of suppUes, often 
take commissions on them, and pay high prices, and 
waste much in order to profit by needless purchases. 
All this they are frequently tempted into by com- 
peting dealers. The act is criminal in both parties, 
and the dealers being generally the more intelligent, 
deserve double blame. Employers who would rather 
endure the loss than take the trouble to prevent it, 
nevertheless owe it to the community to ferret out 
and prosecute such cases. Occasional examples made 
of them would obliterate a great and growing abuse. 
If an agent known to habitually represent a prin- 
cipal, buys a thing at a higher price than the principal 
has authorized, the principal is bound, tho of course 
with right to recover from the agent. Hence on mis- 
trusting or discontinuing a purchasing agent, it is very 
important to give notice to people who have known 
him in that capacity. 

214 (f) The supe- ^^ ^^^ seldom happens that agent and 
rior is generally principal are both responsible. We can 
'" '^' imagine many cases where the other party 

to the contract might in reason sue the agent, and 
then the agent sue the principal, or vice versa; but 
it is a maxim that "the law abhors litigation", and in 
most such cases, the judge would order the first plain- 
tiff to sue the last defendant direct. This fact and 
the fact that the principal is generally "good" for 
damages, while the agent generally is not, naturally 
make the custom as it is. "Let the superior answer"* 
is good sense and good law. But there is another prin- 
ciple of law working in the same direction: under the 
maxim already quoted — that whoever does a thing by 
means of another, does it himself, the agent is regarded 
somewhat as a mere involuntary instrument, and there- 
fore not responsible. 

A principal is responsible for his agent's 

w^onf'done"in°'' wroug-doing, if it occurs in course of any- 

rfuS"^''''"*'"^ thing that the principal has authorized 

his agent to do, but not in anything the 

* Respondeat superior. 



194 The Protection of Rights. [§214^ 

agent does outside of his authority. For instance, a 
servant was throwing snow from the roof of a house 
in New York. He had not given any notice to passers- 
by, and killed a man. The master had to pay damages 
to the man's famnly. Note in this case that it was not 
necessary that the master should specifically order the 
servant to throw off the snow. Agents such as ser- 
vants and employees generally, have certain regular 
and ordinary duties; whatever they do in direct con- 
nection with those duties, their employers are respon- 
sible for. That may be hard on a man who, through 
bad luck, gets hold of a careless or wicked servant, 
but it is the master's bad luck, and not the victim's. 
But servants are hardly a question of luck. The law 
does well to hold a man responsible for care in selecting 
his servants or any other agents. An employer of many 
men could do great harm in being careless whom he 
sets to shoveling snow from roofs, or driving horses 
through the streets, or running elevators or engines. 
214 f/?;. which At first it may appear that if the agent 

ferer'gemmiiT^' <^oes wrong, it would be fairer to sue 
requires, him than to suc the principal. But it 

would not generally be fairer to the sufferer, because 
generally the agent is the man of inferior ability, and 
therefore of inferior wealth. But if he has any money, 
the sufferer may sue him if he prefers. People often 
employ brokers and commission merchants for the 
very purpose of keeping themselves in the background. 
In such a case, the other party to the deal must take 
his risks with the agent. The agent is personally liable 
when he does not disclose his principal. 

If an agent employs subagents, he is usually respon- 
sible for them — a contractor doing work for another 
man, is generally responsible for his workmen. 
214 (i). Both prin- Yct if ouc makes another his agent to 
TiSbieln^w^lf- commit a murder or robbery, the respon- 
doing. sibiHty does not slip past the agent and 

rest entirely upon the principal. In all wrong-doing, 
agent and principal are both responsible, where the 
agent acts under instructions. 



§ 215] Law of Contracts for Personal Relations. 195 

214 ov. Classes of Anybody appointed by another to do 
^sents. anything for him, is his agent to do that 
thing; generally attorneys, commission-merchants, bro- 
kers, auctioneers, salesmen, clerks, domestic servants, 
and any employee — so far as concerns what one was em- 
ployed to do: anybody, in short, who does anything at 
the order or request of anybody else, is his agent, tho 
agents are generally employed to contract, while serv- 
ants seldom are. 

„,^ _ , , . A partner is more than an agent for the 

215 PflrtnGrshiD 

^' other partner or partners : in dealing with 

outsiders, each partner has all the powers of an owner. 
These powers are limited of course to the partnership 
business. A man may be partner in several concerns: 
of course his partner in only one, would not control 
anything in another. 

But in case of disagreement among the partners of 
any firm, a firm can limit a partner's authority by giving 
notice, and anybody having such notice would deal 
with a partner at his own risk. 

But when partners disagree, and a person dealing 
with them has had no notice, when one partner has 
spoken, the rest must abide by what he has said. If 
he runs them in debt, each one is liable to the full 
extent for everything any one partner may do in rela- 
tion to the partnership property. So inclusive is this, 
that if A owns say one tenth in a partnership property, 
and B owns the rest, and B is rich in other things 
while A has nothing else, A can run into debt for a 
lot of worthless things, and B will have to pay for 
them. This presupposes of course that the two appear 
before the world as partners, and the worthless things 
are sold to them in good faith for the partnership 
account. It is very foolish, then, for a rich man to 
take a poor one into partnership, unless he knows 
him very well: for ordinarily a man's whole estate 
is at his partner's mercy. 

Yet a limit to the liability of any partner can be 
made by advertising the amount that he has put in, and 



196 The Protection of Rights. [§215 

stating that the Hability is limited to that amount. 
The method varies in the different states, however, 
and a lawyer should be consulted. 

To constitute a partnership, people must be asso- 
ciated in continuous business for the purpose of making 
money. An unincorporated club or a joining of forces 
for a specific job not taking a long time, does not con- 
stitute a partnership. 

When partnership is dissolved, the liability of each 
partner for the others' acts, is terminated by notice 
of dissolution, to people with whom the firm has regu- 
larly dealt, and by newspaper advertisement to others. 

In scientific language, almost any act 
that one does for the satisfaction of another 
is called a service. Pleading a case or singing a song 
is in that sense a service. For that matter, the law 
calls all persons servants who are in the employment 
of others for salary; the President himself is sometimes 
called the servant of the people. 

In a contract for any sort of service, from that of a 
bootblack up to that of the highest artist, for any 
period — say for a week — the employee is bound to give 
good service and good behavior for a week, and the 
employer is bound to give decent treatment and honest 
pay for a v/eek. If either defaults, it releases the other, 
and the defaulter is of course liable for damages. Yet 
among employers and servants both, there is a good 
deal of ignorance and stupidity about this matter. 
2\Q (a). Discharge 'There are not a few employees of all 
for cause stops pay kiuds who think they can be lazy and 
for res of term, (^fgagreeable, and still get their pay — even 
going to the point of asking pay for the full time 
agreed upon, when they have been deservedly dis- 
charged before it had elapsed. In such a case, it is 
always a good citizen's duty to fight even petty injus- 
tice, rather than yield because yielding is less trouble. 
Only in that way can the public idea of jtistice be 
kept high. 



§ 2i6 c] Law of Contracts for Personal Relations. 197 

But of course in quarrels between em- 
'^wMolicausl%f ployers and employees, the employees are 
doesm)i^'^ ^^"^^' ^y ^^ means always in the wrong: em- 
ployers sometimes maltreat servants, or 
discharge them when they really are not to blame. 
In such cases the employee's right is to get wages for 
the full time agreed upon, even if no service is rendered 
for the portion of it after the discharge. But it is the 
duty of an employee to try to get work, even if wrong- 
fully discharged, and any salary received for service 
during the contractual period, must be applied in reduc- 
tion of the claim on the employer. The same prin- 
ciples hold between mechanics and clerks and agents 
and their employers, as between domestic servants and 
their employers. 

According to the general principle already given, if 
the servants in a house, or mechanics in a factory, are 
paid by the week, and one of them is found to slouch 
or scamp his work, the employer is not bound to keep 
him the full time, nor can the delinquent claim wages 
for the full time under the contract. The contract 
means honest work for honest dollars: if he does not 
render the work, he is not entitled to the dollars. 

If the employer turns him off Wednesday for cause, 
the law does not suppose that he might have worked 
honestly Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The law 
always judges people by their records: even if a man 
with a good record commits a crime, the law is more 
merciful to him than to a man with a bad record. 
216 re; Both ^^ ^^ employee's record is good, but an 

bound for the en- employer finds he does not need him as 
long as he contracted for, it is the em- 
ployer's loss: he should engage for only practicable 
terms. 

If the employee is offered higher wages to leave a fair 
employer before his term is out, he is bound to stay 
his term. In the absence of special agreement, the 
term is usually the period for which payment is made — 
day, week, month, year: the special customs of the 
trade may affect the question. If a servant leaves 



198 The Protection of Rights. [§ 216 c 

without just cause before the end of the term, he is 
not strictly entitled to any pay on account of that term, 
tho the judge would probably give him a quantum, 
meruit (189), but if his departure had caused his em- 
ployer serious inconvenience and loss, the judge would 
probably deduct part or all of the quantum meruit to 
make the employer good, or might even award him 
damages. 

The case of the servant leaving, just cited, might be 
a very important one: for instance, if he were an expert 
engineer or electrician or life-insurance actuary, whose 
place it might not be easy to fill. 

217. Remedies for If Contracts for service are broken in 
Broken Contracts, essential particulars — not merely in for- 
mal ones, the law will either issue an injunction against 
the employee leaving, if his staying were desired by 
the employer (not a very likely case, at least in the 
lower grades), or the law would give damages, or, if 
the case admits, combine both. 

If the contract is not for personal service, but, we 
will say, for manufacturing goods, or building a house, 
the court would probably order ''specific performance", 
as well as give damiages for delay: it tries to meet 
the wishes of the aggrieved person, as far as justice 
will permit. 

We have now gone through the principal kinds of con- 
tracts, which are Sale, Warranty, Surety, Insurance, 
Bailments, Agency, Partnership and Service. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

LAW OP SOME QUASI-CONTRACTUAL RELATIONS. 

Now we come to a set of relations including those of 
the various kinds of trustees who manage property for 
the benefit of others. These relations sometimes arise 
under contract, and sometimes by mere appointment 
and acceptance. We can, however, see something like 
a contract in the latter case: there would seem to be 
consideration on both sides — giving the position with 
its emoluments (if any) on one side, and the perform- 
ance of the duties, on the other. Accepting a position 
is certainly undertaking to perform its duties. Accord- 
ingly, for symmetry's sake, perhaps we may call these 
relations quasi-contractual ones, altho that term does 
not apply in strict legal usage: under it they are gen- 
erally called fiduciary. 

218. Trusteeship in ^ trustee of property is not merely a 
g^n^i'a'' representative of another person or party, 

as an agent is : he really owns the property for a longer 
or shorter time, but owns it for another's benefit. 

The principal classes of trustees are directors of cor- 
porations (who are trustees for the stockholders) ; 
assignees of bankrupts; administrators of estates when 
there are no wills; executors of wills, guardians of 
minors, and trustees without special names, who may 
be appointed for hundreds of purposes. 

If a trustee does not pay over what is entrusted to 
him, or take reasonable care of it, he is liable to have 
his own property sold to make up any losses. He is 

199 



200 The Protection of Rights. [§219 

« - . also liable to prosecution for "Breach of 
Trust", which is a crime punishable with 
imprisonment. This crime is perpetrated vastly 
oftener than inexperienced observers have any idea of, 
especially regarding the property of women and children ; 
but it is very often hushed up, because it is peculiarly 
apt to happen between friends and relatives — trustees 
naturally being selected among them. 

The best defence yet evolved against breach of trust, 
is making a "Trust Company" a trustee, instead of an 
individual ; tho probably it is best to associate with the 
company, an individual friend of the ''cestui que trust", 
as the beneficiary is called. Then instead of one man 
secretly yielding to temptation, it would generally 
be necessary for all the officers to yield together, with 
the knowledge and connivance of each other. 

220. Assignees of ^^ important class of trustees are the 
Bankrupts. assignees of bankrupt estates. When, 

through misfortune (or oftener through lack of economy 
or energy or some of the other qualities essential to 
ability), a man's debts exceed the value of his property, 
it is almost useless for him to go on in his own way, 
because he is apt only to make things worse. It is 
usual then to declare him bankrupt (bench-broken, from 
an ancient custom in the Italian exchanges of breaking 
the bench of a banker who had gotten into such a situ- 
ation), and for him, either voluntarily or through the 
action of a court, to assign his property to a trustee 
who will dispose of it and pay the creditors such por- 
tion of their claims as it will yield. After the settle- 
ment, such as it is, is made, the assignee gives an account 
of it to a court, who, unless there is evidence of fraud 
on the part of the bankrupt, discharges him from farther 
liability. 

220 ra; Justice ^^ ^^^^ sight, this may not seem fair to 

of discharging the Creditors; but it is a great deal fairer 

an yupts. than letting the bankrupt go on making 

worse ducks and drakes than before, and so insuring 



§ 221 a] Law of Some Quasi-Contractual Relations. 201 

t 

that the creditors' shares would be smaller still. On 
the other hand, if the bankrupt's bad condition were 
temporary — the result of some special misfortune, in 
case he is relieved of so much of his debts as he is not 
at the moment in condition to pay, he can take a 
fresh start with lighter burdens; and if he really has 
ability, there is nothing in his bankruptcy to prevent 
his paying his deficit when he makes money enough 
to, as indeed happens in an occasional case. But 
if a man lacks ability, it is best that his creditors should 
take the property he holds, and he find the place for 
which Nature made him, under the guidance of some 
man who has ability. 

We now come to trustees for the estates of deceased 
persons. At the outset we must note a difference in 
the ways real estate and personal property are disposed 
of at the owner's death. 

rynx KA • ■ + + If uo wlll IS Icft maklug a different dis- 

Devolution of intes- position, the real estate, subject to dower 
tate estates. ^^ courtesy rights (82 g), at once becomes 

the property of the heirs, while personal property is 
held in trust by somebody appointed by the court, 
called an administrator, for the payment of funeral 
expenses and debts, and then for the division of any 
balance that may remain, among the relatives or others 
entitled to it. 

This does not imply that a family must live off the 
real estate until all the debts are paid: there might be 
real estate in litigation that could not be used in years. 
In such cases, the court makes from the personal prop- 
erty, such allowances for the support of the survivors 
as the estate seems to justify, and even leaves some- 
thing to the discretion of the administrator. 
221 (a). Rights of Rights of inheritance, when there is no 
relatives of intes- will, vary in the different states; but gen- 
*"*^^" erally, rights of dower and courtesy being 

allowed for, the real estate at once, without any for- 
mality, vests equally in the heirs. "Heirs" is really a 
technical term, meaning the persons who take real estate 



202 The Protection of Rights. [§221 a 

when there is no will. They are the nearest' blood-rela- 
tives of the same degree — children or the descend- 
ants of deceased children if there are any ; if not, parents 
if there are any; if not, sisters and brothers or the 
descendants of deceased ones if there are any; and 
so on, out to remote degrees of relationship. The 
children of a deceased person who would take if living, 
divide equally the share that the parent would have 
had. Of personal estate, husband or wife usually 
takes a third, or a half where there are no living de- 
scendants; and the rest is divided like real estate. 
222. Executors. When there is a will, matters are settled 

^'"S' up by one or more persons usually ap- 

pointed in the will, and confirmed by the court, called 
executors. . There is a very great advantage in this: a 
man who has accumulated and managed property is 
apt to be a much better judge of who would better 
manage it for his family, than a court who knows nothing 
about it, and is apt to appoint as administrators near 
relatives who may lack the necessary business qualities. 

Sometimes a testator forgets to name executors, or 
those he names may not survive him. In such cases, 
the court appoints administrators with the will attached. 

The usual essentials of a will good in law, are that it 
shall be in writing, state the testator's desires clearly, 
and be as simple as possible. If it is intended to give 
a wife property to take the place of her dower rights, 
it should clearly say that the property is given in 
place of dower (or to a husband, in place of 
courtesy); it should name all persons naturally apt 
to inherit, even any that it may intend to cut off, 
so that they will not be supposed to be over- 
looked; it should be dated, and state that the 
testator revokes all other wills previously made by 
him; and it should be signed in presence of two 
witnesses not otherwise named in it, who them- 
selves sign a statement written on it that it 
was signed in their presence, pronounced by the 
testator as his (or her) last will and testament, and 
that, at the testator's request, they have signed it 



§ 22 2 a] Law of Some Quasi-Contractual Relations. 203 

in his (or her) presence, and in the presence of each 
other. They should also append their addresses. 

If it is not said in the will that it revokes all pre- 
vious wills, and a previous one is found, the early one's 
provisions must be carried out so far as they can be 
without upsetting provisions of the new one. For in- 
stance, if the new will names bequests to A, B and C, 
and an old unrevoked will is found, leaving bequests to 
E, F and G, if there is money left after A, B and C are 
paid, E, F and G will be paid, or paid pro rata as the 
money holds out, and these payments would be at the 
expense of such persons as would otherwise have the 
money under the last will. 

If a will is known to have been made, but cannot be 
found, if it can be proved that the testator did not 
destroy it, and wished it enforced (for instance, if it 
was accidentally destroyed after his death), and if any 
of its legal provisions can be satisfactorily proved 
(which they seldom can be) , they are carried out. Other- 
wise the estate is divided as if there had been no will. 

If after making a will, a man sells a piece of property 
named in it, the person to whom he has left it can get 
no equivalent: the will is to that extent of no effect: 
so people naming special pieces of property in wills, 
must be careful afterwards. A better way, unless there 
is reason to the contrary, would be to name only sums 
of money, or shares of the estate. 

In some states, marriage or the birth of a child, after 
making a will, sets aside the will, it being assumed that 
it would be the testator's v/ish that the new member 
of the family should be provided for, which of course, 
would be done by treating his estate as if he were 
intestate. 

Theoretically, a man can leave property to whom he 
pleases, tho if he passes over those who would naturally 
be nearest and dearest to him in favor of others, it 
would make it easier for those neglected to prove him 
of unsound mind, so that his will would be set aside. 
222 (a). Who can- Under the English law, and still in some 
not make wills. states, uot Only are wills of persons of un- 



204 The Protection of Rights. [§ 222 a 

sound mind set aside, but also those of boys under 
fourteen and girls under twelve. In most states, how- 
ever, the ages have been raised to eighteen and sixteen. 
Until lately, under the law of England, and perhaps 
still under that of some of the backward states, mar- 
ried women cannot make wills. 

222 (b). Restnc- There are also some other restrictions 
tions on alienation, regarding what the law will or will not see 
carried out in a will. The experience of ages has shown 
that it is against ' ' the greatest good of the greatest num- 
ber "as the philosophers say, or against "public policy" 
as the lawyers say, that land or capital should be kept 
in hands that cannot or will not use it properly, and 
so made more difficult of attainment by people of 
ability who will get the most out of it, and manage it 
so as to afford the most employment and product for 
their fellow men; and it has also been realized that it 
is against public policy that the accumulation by com- 
pound interest of enormous properties should put so 
much power in any set of hands as to make them dan- 
gerous to the community.* For these reasons the law 
will not give efficacy to any disposition of property 
which will delay its passage into new hands for many 
generations. So it is very important in making a will 
leaving property in trust for the benefit of children or 
descendants more remote, not to run up against any 
of the laws affecting alienation. There are several of 
these, varying in different states, and much complicated 
by decisions under various circumstances : so it is wise 
to consult a lawyer whenever trying to tie up property 
for anybody's benefit, or for that matter in making any 
will whatever. And it may well be remarked in passing 
that it is very unwise to put off making a will until 
one's deathbed is reached. Not everybody dies in bed; 
and for those who do, the time is apt to be deferred, 
rather than hastened, by the consciousness that one's 

* This well-established principle of law is now attracting the 
attention of those who consider it necessary to curb the power 
of the trusts, and to limit the accumulation of excessive fortunes. 



§ 22 2 c] Law of Some Quasi-Contractual Relations. 205 

affairs are as well adjusted as one can make them. In 
England, it is the drift of the law to let property be 
tied up at least during any existing life. Once a trust 
for the benefit of all the testator's grandchildren was 
maintained until the death of the last of eight grand- 
children who were alive when the will took effect. But 
more grandchildren born after the will took effect, got 
no benefit from the trust after the last of the earlier 
grandchildren died. Yet of course the later ones par- 
ticipated in the division of the estate that the law 
then required, but the case would probably not have 
received the attention it has unless other persons were 
living who had to share with them to their disadvantage. 
But there is an American illustration in a direction 
nearly opposite. The American law tends to restrict 
alienation only during the longer life of one of two living 
persons who must be designated in the will. Hence 
when a testator tried to create a trust for the benefit 
of four living granddaughters, it was declared void 
because he had designated more than two, during the 
life of the surviving one of whom the trust should last. 
222(c). Devises for Notwithstanding all this, property can 
educational or be tied Up for cducatioual or charitable 

charitable uses. i i j , i i r-, 

uses as long as one pleases, and the oenent 
of such things as hospitals and schools can be restricted 
to particular kinds of people. Yet a testator could not 
endow an elegant domain with homes and schools whose 
use should be restricted to his descendants forever, 
because it would be a plain attempt to evade the law. 
Of course the determination of whether any such scheme 
is an attempt to evade the law, is one of the things 
that judges are for: they are all the time stopping at- 
tempts to evade the law. Such a case could hardly 
escape the attention of the courts, because as soon as 
the time should come for proving such a will, or later, 
when the legal time should come for dividing up the 
property, there would probably be people entitled to 
inherit, who would apply to the courts for their rights. 
It is not likely that all of a testator's family would have 
died out: there would be a distant relative somewhere. 



2o6 The Protection of Rights. [§ 222 c 

If not, the property would escheat to the state any- 
how. 

When all bequests have been paid, if anything is left 
over, it is divided as the law would have divided the 
whole estate if there had been no will. 

A minor child does not at once become 

' "^"^ '^"^ '^' the owner of his share of a parent's estate. 
He holds the legal title, but the management of it, in- 
cluding the signing of all papers relating to it, is gen- 
erally done by his guardian — a person approved by the 
court, often the surviving parent, tho the guardian is 
generally named in a will. 

After the testator's death, the will must be proved 
genuine before a court whose province it is to attend 
to the interests of widows, orphans and other bene- 
ficiaries from the estates of such persons. If there is 
no will disposing of an estate, application for admin- 
istrators must be made by the parties in interest. 

On first learning that courts appoint 
bate'Courts°^ ^^^' administrators or executors , people are very 
apt to ask: Why should a court come 
bothering in the private affairs of a family when it 
loses its chief member or any member? To begin with, 
a will is often questioned, and somebody must pass on 
its validity. Then the estate of a deceased person is 
not merely an affair of his family. The richest man 
owes some debts — probably the richer he is, the larger 
they are. Moreover, as we have seen, a man of great 
ability is called upon to help manage the affairs of a 
great many people — 4s guardian, administrator, and in 
the various other forms of trusteeship. His relations 
to all these people, not to speak of those to hrs family, 
often give rise, after a man's death, to a great many 
questions, and civilization has never been evolved very 
far without its being found necessary to have special 
officers, and even special courts, to see that justice is 
done in all these connections. Nor is the multitude 
and complexity of these relations the only reason why 
courts should supervise the management of the estates 
of deceased persons. Those for whose benefit the 



§ 2 26] Law of Some Quasi-Contractual Relations. 207 

estates are settled — especially children when they 
grow up, might not be satisfied, and might make claims 
on a guardian, or on the executor of a will, or the ad- 
ministrator of an estate where there is no will. If such 
trustees act under the advice and supervision of a court, 
their acts cannot be successfully questioned. 

225. Trustees for Minor heirs are, of course, not the only 
defectives. persons whose property is cared for by 

somebody else. Generally a court appoints somebody 
to care for the property of lunatics, drunkards and 
spendthrifts who have families dependent on them. 
226 Court super- ^^^ there are still reasons of an op- 
yisio'n of Trustees posite nature why trustees generally should 
in genera. -j^^ watched over by the courts. Persons 

having the interests of others in charge are not neces- 
sarily all superior to ignorance and temptation. The 
courts supply them with the experience of ages, and 
tend to guard them against wrong-doing of all kinds. 

The judges tell them under what circumstances they 
may sell or mortgage real estate (unless unlimited power 
has been conferred in a will) and what sorts of invest- 
ments they may make; and also require accounts of 
their proceedings. 

Yet all these methods are not any more efficacious 
than other human inventions are : hence the desirability, 
as before stated, of a will naming executors who can 
be trusted, or associating a trust company in the man- 
agement of the property. 

When the task of any of the trustees we have been 
describing is done, they can be made safe from future 
trouble by taking their accounts before the proper 
court. After the court has approved them, the trustees 
are free from all liability, unless later there is evidence 
of fraud. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

PERSONAL PROPERTY. 

Schemes for Distributing it more Evenly. 

(I) Scamping, Forbidding Work, Destroying Product, 
Anarchism, Communism. 

Now we have some idea of the agencies by which 
property is evolved and distributed and protected, and 
we knew before we studied these agencies, that the dis- 
tribution is very unequal — that the mass of mankind get 
very little compared with a few favored ones, and are 
naturally much dissatisfied with what they get. But 
we have studied to very little purpose if we have not 
come to a realization that the inequality is more of 
Nature's making than of man's, and that roughly speak- 
ing, and with a wide but decreasing margin of excep- 
tion, the men loudest in objections generally get what 
they loudest claim — namely, get what each man pro- 
duces — ^that, still roughly speaking and with a wide 
margin for exceptions, those who get little, produce 
little; those who get much produce much; and that 
he who would get more, must produce more. 

But we also know that this is a slow and, to most 
men, virtually an impossible way; and that conse- 
quentl}^ the world is full of schemes for doing it in 
other ways. Some of these we will now examine. 
227. Poverty has First, however, let us realize that altho 
no causes. a great deal of speculation has been spent 

on the causes of poverty, there is no cause of poverty. 
Wealth only has causes; but ignorance, stupidity, lazi- 
ness and misfortune of course obstruct the causes of 

208 



§ 2 28] Personal Property. 209 

wealth. In early times all people were poor, even to- 
day every child, is born with nothing, and of course he 
has nothing until he produces it himself, except as it is 
given him from the production of others. Unless he 
produces much, or somebody produces much for him, 
he never has much. Poverty lasts until the causes of 
wealth are effectively put in action. 

We have seen the conditions under which civilized 
man evolves his rights in personal property, to be 
initiative energy, discretion, frugality and the other 
virtues which we sum up as Ability. 

Of course there are other ways to wealth, such as 
luck and inheritance. But supposing them frequent 
enough for poor men generally to build any hopes on 
(which they are not), there ia,a characteristic of wealth 
got in those ways, which detracts very much from its 
usefulness. It is generally very fleeting: "Easy come, 
easy go", and ''Twenty-five years from shirt-sleeves to 
shirt-sleeves",* are proverbs that have grown up from 
general experience. 

And yet the lazy and stupid, and even the perversely 
ingenious, are constantly nursing schemes for making 
everybody rich in defiance of the ways Nature has 
decreed, just as ignorant people are constantly trying 
to invent perpetual-motion machines, and to make 
water run up-hill by its own weight. We have already 
touched some of these schemes as affecting rights in 
real estate, but similar questions come up in connection 
with the products of labor, and we shall see in time 
that they come up in regard to money and taxation. 
Let us now examine the most prominent of the schemes 
for diffusing property without diffusing Ability to pro- 
duce it. 

The one probably in most general use is 

228^_ Scamping "making more work". Workmen often 

think that they can make more work by 

* Mr. Walker, of Worcester, whose investigation has already 
been alluded to (i 01, note), found that of the sons of the one 
hundred and seven manufacturers in his city in i860, only seven 
had property, or had died leaving property, up to '89. 



2IO The Protection of Rights. [§228 

scamping their work or neglecting it — that if a job is done 
so poorly as to need doing two or three times, there 
will be just so much more demand for labor ; or that if a 
man does only half as much work in a day as he reason- 
ably might, two men will get a day's work out of a day.* 

* From the New York Times, April 24, i goo : 

" The Crime of Mrs. Derrick. — A headstrong and unman- 
ageable woman perpetrated a crime against the new social 
order in a Lowell carpet-mill the other day, by doing more work, 
and earning more money than the laws of the Carpet-Weavers' 
Union allow. The details of the shocking affair are set forth in 
a despatch to our neighbor the Sun: 

" 'Lowell, Mass., April 21. — Three hundred weavers employed 
by the Lowell Manufacturing Company, one of the concerns in 
the Bigelow Carpet Company, are on a strike because one of 
their number, Mrs. Jessie Derrick, persists in turning more 
work off her loom than is permitted by the regulations of the 
Carpet -Weavers' Union. The union has decided upon a maxi- 
mum product of two and one-half pieces, but Mrs. Derrick has 
her loom speeded up so high that she can turn off three pieces 
a day. On account of this the union sent word to the agent 
of the company and asked that he compel her to reduce her 
production, but he refuses to stop the woman from earning 
all the money she is able to. . . .' 

" Mrs. Derrick explains that her loom was not 'speeded up'. 
Not at all. It was her energy and quickness and willingness to 
work that wrought the mischief. Back of it all very likely lay 
the necessity of earning more money to support those depending 
on her for food. . . . 

" Other carpet-weavers in the Bigelow works are as capable of 
getting off as much work as she, but as the union has decided 
it is unwise for them to do so, they all comply with the rule 
limiting the maximum product of each operative to two and a 
half pieces. 

"The dead level of triumphant inferiority cannot be main- 
tained and the comfort of the incapable and the lazy safeguarded 
unless the two-and-one-half-piece rule is enforced." 

From the Chicago correspondence of the New York Evening 
Post, Nov. '99: 

" A short time ago a Chicago man, in moving a dresser, broke 
off a gas-jet which projected from the wall in his bedroom. He 
plugged the broken pipe and took the fragment to a gas-fitting 
supply house, intending to buy the short piece of pipe and attach 
it himself. When he asked for it the salesman said: 

" 'Are you a journeyman gas-fitter?' 

" ' No', said the customer, 'I'm a shoe-dealer. What's that 
got to do with buying gas-pipe ? ' 



§ 2 28] Personal Property. 211 

That certainly would promote the general good, if 
the world can be made richer by producing less wealth. 

But its effect even on the laborers themselves is 
disastrous. 

First: the scampers keep themselves out of jobs; 
Second: when the}^ get jobs, if all scamp, tho each 
scamper gets paid for his false work, he has to pay for 
the false work of other scampers; Third: in the long 

" 'A whole lot', said the salesman; 'I can't sell you that sec- 
tion of pipe unless you have a working card from the gas-fitters' 
union.' 

" 'But I want this pipe for my own house, and I'm going to 
put it up myself ' , protested the householder. 

" 'That's the very trouble ', said the clerk. 'You'll have to go 
and hire a journeyman gas-fitter to put that pipe on, I can't 
sell it to you.' 

" And the householder was forced to hire a gas-fitter, at $3.75 
a day, to come and do the work. 

" There was a quantity of old iron piping in the basement of a 
building, which the contractor sold to a second-hand dealer. The 
man drove his wagon down to the place and started to load it 
himself with the old pipe. He was stopped by a member of 
the Steam-fitters' Union, who told him he must employ mem- 
bers of the union to handle that pipe or they would call out all 
the union men of the building. He had paid for the stuff, and so 
he had to hire two men at $4.50 a day to load his wagons with 
the pipe. . . . 

"The Plumbers' Union has laid down the precise amount of 
effort which may be expended and branded ' one day ' . There 
is a walking delegate in each ward whose duty it is to visit 
each job and check up the work, and any plumber found working 
longer than the rules allow is liable to a fine. 

" In one case the stonework on a building was all completed 
except the keystone of the arch over the main doorway. An 
opening had been left for it, and the workmen were arranging a 
block and tackle to hoist it into place, when a walking delegate 
appeared and demanded whether the men engaged in the 
work were members of the Hoisting Engineers' Union. He was 
told that they were not — they were members of the Bricklayers' 
Union and the Stonemasons' Union and several other unions, 
but the hoisting engineers had been overlooked. At once he 
ordered the work on the building stopped until a hoisting engineer 
appeared to haul that forty-pound piece of stone up to its place, 
and all the work came to a standstill until the proper man was 
found. 

" A lather of ordinary speed can put up sixty bundles of laths 



212 The Protection of Rights. [§228 

run, the scamper lessens the general demand for labor, 

and of course his own wages. 

000 / . u +h. In illustration: a man in New York 

228(a). Keeps the ^ ,., . 

scamper out of wanted to put a trunk-hit from his cellar 
"'°^^' to his garret. Some steam-heating fix- 

tures in the cellar were in the way. At that time, the 
steam-fitters had a very strong union, and it was said 
to be the policy to ' ' make work " to a very extraordinary 
extent. Consequently steam-fitting in New York cost 
several times what it did in most other places, and the 
estimate for the alteration in question was so high 
that the owner concluded not to put in the lift : moral, 
"making work" cost the steam-fitters a job, and cost 
the lift-makers a job too. 

Another illustration: in the nineties, no first-class 
mason in New York would do a job of plastering in 
less than three coats, while excellent jobs were done 
elsewhere in two. At length came a quarrel between 

in a day. The rules of the union limit him to twenty-five. 
That makes the job last longer, and as the lather is paid by the 
day it keeps him at work more than twice as long. The plaster- 
ers who come after him can work no faster than the laths are 
put up, therefore his job is extended to twice its length by this 
simple nile. 

*' And now conditions have reached such a stage that the 
opposing forces are face to face and measuring each other's 
strength. The contractors and builders have warned the unions 
that January i will see a general shut-down unless rules, hours, 
and other conditions change. If that 'lockout' comes, no 
man can say where it will end." 

When it does " end", it will be interesting to figure the profits 
the laborers have directly made through this form of scamping, 
not to include what they themselves will have paid out for 
scamped gas-fitting, steam-fitting, plumbing, hoisting and 
lathing. 

After the foregoing was in type, the results appeared. From 
the New York Evening Post's Chicago correspondence, Dec. 16, 
1900: 

'' The Building Trades Council ... is rapidly nearing its end. 
... It had more than 30,000 members. . . . Now it has about 
10,000, and [pending withdrawals] will reduce it to 7000. . . . 
The loss to the men in wages by permitting the unprincipled 
leaders ... to prevent them working has been in the vicinity of 
$2,500,000." 



§ 2 28 c] Personal Property. 213 

masters and men, and at least one of the masters told 
why he had declined to do two-coat work: the trade- 
union would not let its men work on jobs of less than 
three — one-third of most plastering jobs was pure waste, 
including those on the buildings for which the plasterers 
themselves were paying rent ; and moreover many jobs 
m.ust have been lost in all the building trades, as was 
just shown in the steam-fitting and dumb-waiter trades. 
228 (bh He gets "^^^ when the scamper has to pay other 
only one profit but scampcrs, Other scampers have to pay 

pays many. -u • -^ i i •": • 

mm: so it may appear as broad as it is 
long. But he gets paid for his own work at first hand, 
while most work that he has to pay for, must pass 
through many hands before it reaches him, and he 
must pay toll to them all, and this toll is based on the 
scamped cost. Manufactured articles cost the consumer 
many times what the manufacturer gets for them. 
Hence, if the hands through which the article passes, 
scamp their work, the consumer has to pay not only 
for the scamped work of the first producer (as he gets 
paid for his own) , but also for the toll of every set of 
hands through which it passes before reaching him. 

Scamping lessens not only the demand for particular 
jobs, but also for labor in general. Work only half 
done, or done at half speed, costs twice as much as 
228 (c). Cannot i^ properly done — in fact more than twice 
long receive good as much, bccausc not oulv is half the labor 

wages unless v i i i n t- ■, 

earned. wastcQ, Dut generally some of the mate- 

Piecework. ^^^ Therefore, not only is the public un- 

able to pay for as much of it, but it cannot, in the long 
run, enable an employer to pay high wages. And if 
laborers return less than a paying product for their 
wages, the capital employing them must in time be 
used up, the employer's business diminished or destroyed, 
and the demand for labor be just that much less. 

In order to make paying by the piece a good remedy 
against men spreading their work over too long a time, 
one would have to invent a remedy against scamping 
the pieces in order to get more pay in a given time. 
As a matter of fact, the highest order of work is done 



2 14 ^^ Protection of Rights. [§ 228 c 

"by time", and the lowest order "by the piece". A 
house done by "days' work" will generally bring more 
than one done by contract; and the better orders of 
mechanics, the world over, work by the day. 

Putting the thing in the broadest way, if all men 
only pretended to work, the result would of course be 
that nothing would be produced, and no man would 
have anything. 

229. Pretending ^^e philosophers who believe in * ' making 

and forbidding labor, ^ork " by scamping it, have not stopped 
at scamping. Thornton * gives a case where they tried 
mere pretending. A lot of stone-cutting had been done 
contrary to trade-union rules, and the union made the 
bosses pay men for standing idle over it with their tools, 
as long as it had taken to cut it. Thornton wrote forty 
years ago. In our progressive age, the papers are full 
of similar instances. 

The schemes to rob somebody — even other laborers, 
for the benefit of labor, include the seizing of work that 
naturally belongs to somebody else, and making the 
community pay the v/aste of the unnatural arrange- 
ment. Of this class are laws requiring stone-cutting 
to be done in cities where the stone is used, and at 
city prices, instead of at the quarries at country prices. 
Such a law regarding some public buildings in New 
York City, was pronounced unconstitutional in 1901, 
at an important saving to the city. 

The Supreme Court of Indiana, in a decision that a law 
was unconstitutional which obliged counties, cities and 
towns to pay at least 20 cents an hour for unskilled 
labor, held that cities, counties and towns have as much 
right as anybody else to contract for labor at the 
lowest market price. The proponents of the law hoped 
to establish a rate for labor generally : as if the matter 
could be lifted away from the law of demand and 
supply, otherwise than by disguised "charity". 

Even more absurd than the foregoing proceedings, is 
the securing of business to the nation at the expense 
of the nation. Such a proceeding was the regulation 

* On Labor. • 



§ 229] Personal Property. 215 

that all material to be used in making the Panama 
Canal, should be bought in the United States, and 
when possible be transported over railroads in the 
United States — both steps regardless of whether the 
goods or the transportation would cost the people of 
the United States more in the United States than else- 
where. The first of these absurd provisions was revoked, 
and restored in answer to the clamor of the protection- 
ists. At the time of this writing the second has been 
revoked, and there has not yet been time to restore it. 

Protective tariffs, we shall see later, tend to become 
of the same class. 

Of course, in the long run, such wastes must be dis- 
tributed over the community, and if they were the rule, 
the wasting laborers would have had to pay back for 
them, all that they got for their own waste. No rule is 
good for anybody unless it is good for everybody. But 
that school of philosophers has not even stopped at 
scamping and pretending work: they go so far as to 
forbid it part of the time, as in the celebrated case of 
Mrs. Derrick (228, note). 

This matter is important enough to justify adding 
one more extreme illustration. Early in 1906 the 
following resolution was introduced at the United 
Mine Workers' convention in Indianapolis, and referred 
to a committee: 

RESOLUTION No. 107. 

Whereas, The practice of many of our members, working 
tinder favorable conditions in various parts of this country, of 
making six and seven dollars per shift is detrimental to the 
best interests of our organization as a whole; and. 

Whereas, This has a tendency to make it harder for us to 
obtain an advance in wages at our convention; and, 

Whereas, The average miner is unable to make $3.50 per 
shift; therefore, be it 

Resolved, That this convention place a restriction of $3.50 
per shift, clear of all mine expenses, on all miners working at 
the face. 

Presented by Local Union No. 99, Belleville, 111. 

A. L. Wright, 

T. J. HiTCHINGS, 

Scale Committee. Delegates. 



2i6 The Protection of Rights. [§229 

The Times, in commenting on this resolution, quotes 
Archbishop Keane: 

' ' The man who slights his work and gives his employer less 
than he agrees to give is a thief, and any labor union that 
upholds him in this slighting of work is a school of thievery." 

The willingness of a trade-union committee to receive 
and refer such a resolution as that, demonstrates the 
body to be under the dominion of a degree of short- 
sightedness that it must take generations to cure; to 
be far below the control of reason; and in exigencies, to 
be susceptible to no other control than the unflinching 
power of the state. To temporize by anything short 
of that, is simply cruel. 

If reports are to be believed, the Australasian cases 
of the early nineties, surpass even these. There labor 
was scarce and food cheap, and a man could make 
enough to live on by working half the day. The in- 
capables would not let the capables do more than 
half a day's work. One must either soldier all day or 
go home when he had done as much as a slouch usually 
does in a day. Capable men began leaving the colony 
on account of it. But the demonstration of the 
absurdity was shown when the policy had stopped 
some industries and depopulated some villages, and 
some of the leaders and "walking delegates" were in 
jail for conspiracy. 

But since these conditions were stated, they must 
have cured themselves: for nothing is said regarding 
them by the most recent writers. In fact, there is 
some reason to believe that the testimony on which 
they were based (tho it appeared in a high quarter — 
the correspondence of The Nation, unless I am mis- 
taken — or I should not have accepted it) is exaggerated, 
and that the conditions were partly due to industrial 
depression and financial stringency. Dr. Clark * goes 
so far as to say that while such statements may apply 
to particular localities and occasions in Australasia, 

; * The Labor Movement in Australasia, by Victor S. Clark, 1906. 



§231] Personal Property. 217 

"Ca' canny" and restriction of output are not remark- 
ably greater in Australasia than in Great Britain and 
some parts of America. Yet I let the original state- 
ments stand, with these qualifications, as an illustra- 
tion to the inexperienced reader of the difficulty of 
getting correct information on subjects where there 
is so much controversy. We shall see plenty more of 
such illustrations. 

non <(cu ++■ After all, it may be asked: where is 

230. 'Shutting . ..„ ' . , -^ , , ^ . . 

down" a different the difference between laborers restrictmg 
^^^^' work, and manufacturers restricting pro- 

duct? The manufacturer generally restricts volun- 
tarily, while the laborer is often forced to it — a direct 
interference with the Right to Work; if several manu- 
facturers shut down, they all share the loss: if the in- 
competent limit the labors of the competent, the first 
gain at the others' loss. For the manufacturer, the 
public decides the question by refusing the goods; for 
the laborer, the question is decided irrespective of the 
public needs — the public may be suffering for the labor, 
but must go unsatisfied in order to enable the incom- 
petent to get higher wages. The manufacturer's slow- 
ing up (in legitimate cases) is to prevent waste : restrict- 
ing labor regardless of cases, in most cases is waste. 

Even scamping, pretending, and choking-off labor 
have not been enough for the philosophers : they have 
often gone to destroying. The papers are full of in- 
231 D strucfon Stances. As three in many, the stone- 
as an aid to polishers' union made all the workmen in 
Production. ^-^^ pj^^^j Savoy in New York stop work 

until the polish was rubbed off some marble mantels 
that had been polished near the quarries instead of 
by the New York union. In 1906 and for some years 
earlier, in most American printing offices, the men 
who set advertisements, would not use electrotype 
plates sent by advertisers, before they had set up a 
copy and destroyed their work. At a meeting of 
glass-blowers' unions in Terre Haute in 1905, their 
national officers were instructed to "get out a circular 
to be sent to all labor bodies asking them to get their 



2i8 The Protection of Rights. [§231 

families and their friends to break all bottles before 
throwing them away." Those bottles were the prop- 
erty of the brewers, bore their owners' names blown in 
the glass, were subject to reclamation wherever found, 
and their contents had been sold on the understanding 
that the bottles should be returned. The resolution of 
the glass-blowers was a deliberate invitation to destroy 
other people's property in order to make work for the 
glass-blowers. 

People often falsely reason about a good many other 
things as they do about scamped work. In advocating 

not only scamped work, but some kinds 
?f ma?y's^chemes^to ^i taxes (464) and cheap money (362) 
get something out and all other schemes for enabling a man 

to get something for nothing, people forget 
that schemes to get something for nothing are also 
schemes to make somebody (and themselves as often 
as anybody) pay something for nothing. This is in- 
evitably the case of all wages artificially made higher 
than the natural equation between supply and demand 
(148 ti). 

.g^ p . That fact is so often lost sight of because 

allv' consider only people generally think that high wages 
Income, not outgo. ^^^^^ ^-^^ ^^^^^ question of prosperity. 

Men of average mind seem able to think of themselves 
only as producers, not as consumers. They do not 
seem able to reflect that they have to pay out money 
as well as to get it in, and that if other people's wages 
are higher than the value of the things produced, they 
themselves have to pay out something for nothing when 
they pay those wages, and have also to pay middle- 
men's profits besides, while they themselves only receive 
something for nothing, without any middlemen's profits. 
In point of honesty, scamped work is exactly on a 
level with false weight or scant measure or an irre- 
deemable light dollar. It is a scheme to make a man 
pay for a day's work without furnishing it to him. 

Now let us look into some of the other schemes than 
scamping work, which have been regarded as superior to 



§ 234] Personal Property. 219 

Nature's scheme for enabling men to get rich. At the 
bottom of them all, more or less disguised, is (as we saw 
regarding real estate [65-74 d\) the idea of govern- 
ment withdrawing its protection from property rights, 
so as to give those who have been too stupid or lazy 
or shiftless to accumulate any property of their own, a 
chance at that of other people. 

The most extreme proposition of this 
kind IS to do away with government itself, 
so that a man who has no property of his own can 
help himself to the property of other people. 

How long property would be produced under such 
conditions, the advocates of them do not say. There 
are some who want to do away with government, who 
still want property rights respected, but they do not 
tell us how they are going to get them respected : they 
want everybody to respect them voluntarily, and to be 
models of virtue all around — voluntarily. They say that 
it is a disgrace to a man to have to be compelled; and 
so"^it is, but all the same, a good many will not behave 
themselves unless threatened with that disgrace. 

The form of insanity that wants these self-contradic- 
tory things — often a murderous insanity, often only the 
gentle mooning of certain poets, novelists and esthetes 
who make themselves ridiculous in attempting the 
sterner sort of intellectual work — is attributable to 
the same source as most other forms of insanity — the 
abuse of a good thing. Government is a good thing, 
but it is often overdone. Those who have been unjustly 
oppressed by it often become incapable of seeing any- 
thing but evil in it, or in authority of any kind. 

It need hardly be added that those who are afflicted 
in this way are called anarchists. 

As they seem to be getting more troublesome, there 
is growing interest in w^ays of suppressing them. Rea- 
soning of course can produce no effect. Violent repres- 
sion seems to succeed no better, but a perfectly logical 
way has been suggested which may be worth trying: 
if a man wants to get rid of government, rid him of it, 
withdraw government protection from his person and 



220 The Protection of Rights. [§234 

property, if he has any (which is not likely), and give 
him a chance to work his theories out in practice.* 
Tho government would not protect him, it could con- 
sistently restrain him, because in withdrawing its de- 
fence from him, it would not give up anybody's right 
of self-defence; and should the anarchist attack per- 
son or property, the victim would have a right to all 
the defence he could muster, including that for which 
he, unlike the aggressor, would not have abandoned his 
right to appeal to government. There is not enough 
argument for Anarchy, to admit of its finding a place 
in a sane mind, so we need not discuss it any farther. 

Another class of dreamers are willing to retain govern- 
ment, but want to do away with property rights. 
This class includes communists and socialists. 

Anarchists, communists and socialists claim that 
poverty is due to existing social arrangements rather 
than to the incapacity of many people, and the claim 
is true so far as bad social arrangements impede the 
operation of the causes of wealth. To upset the social 
arrangements as they propose, would be very well if 
234 ra;. 5ac/»esso/ "trial had ever proved any other arrange- 
preseni laws does meuts better. But nothing is more diffi- 

not proue goodness i,,i ,,ii- -r i > i 

of proposed cult than to tell m advance now a social 

changes. arrangement is going to work. Those we 

have are the best we have tried, and it has taken a 
good many thousand years to get them even as good 
as they are now. They have improved so slowly, be- 
cause human nature improves slowly, and all social 
machinery has to be worked by human nature. 

The communists propose to substitute 

ommunism. ^^^ ^^^ present order of property rights, 

having government make an even division all around, 

* The author, while beUeving this remedy original with him- 
self, of course supposed it probably original with a good many 
others. He first proposed it in The Forum soon after the 
Carnot assassination, and on repeating it in The Review of 
Reviews soon after the McKinley assassination, he received a 
copy of a similar proposal that had been made by Judge Arn- 
quist of Wisconsin. 



§235^] Personal Property. 221 

so that those who have saved nothing can have a share 
of what other people have saved. 

2Zb(a). $1,200 At a superficial glance, it seems as if 
^p'^f^^- such a scheme, if it could succeed now, 

would add vastly to human happiness. But it could 
not unless it produced more things : for we would have 
only a little more than twelve hundred dollars apiece: 
that being the average wealth in the United States in 
1900. To divide it evenly would not increase the hap- 
piness of those who have less, as much as it would 
diminish the happiness of those who have more. 

235 (b). Sudden ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^ division were to give 

wealth 'a doubtful suddcu Wealth, suddcu wealth is not apt 
^^^'"^' to be used well. It certainly was not at 

the British coal-mines when a sudden rise in the price 
of coal gave the colliers a sudden rise in wages, and 
many of them spent the money in feeding their dogs 
on tenderloin steak, and smoking pipes with two bowls 
and one mouthpiece. 

True, the rich do not always use their money well, 
any more than the poor suddenly getting it, always 
use it badly. It is only a matter of probabilities either 
way: there is no universal rule with so complex a 
machine as human nature. It is simply the general 
fact that a man who gradually makes his money, is 
almost certain to use it better than a man who gets 
it suddenly; and it ought to be superfluous to point 
out why. 

Yet it would undoubtedly be well for people to 
have more, just as fast as they can make it: for that 
will be no faster than they are apt to use it well — 
and there is hope, as we have said more than once 
and shall give facts for later, that the ability to pro- 
duce it * and to use it, are fast being evolved together. 

* The wealth in the United States, is reported by the Census 
to have increased as follows. We shall find evidence later 
(Chapter XXIII) that the poor have received a larger proportion 
of it than the rich. In 1850, it was $308 per head; in i860, 
$514; in 1870, $780; in 1880, $850; in 1890, $1039; andinigoo, 

$12^6. 



2 22 The Protection of Rights. [§ 235 h 

But must each man himiself produce unaided all he 
can have? Not by any means: inventors and or- 
ganizers are constantly enabling other people to pro- 
duce more. Consequently a laborer in a civilized 
nation has more than a king in a barbarous one; but 
men seldom appreciate what they have, when others 
have more. 

Not only would communism fail to 
llVa\)tue"whUef '^^^^ everybody rich, even for a moment, 
but what wealth (?) it did give the very 
poorest, would all soon be either frittered away, or 
back again in the hands of Ability. As said before, the 
machinery has to be worked by human nature : at the 
outset, communism would make the lazy and shiftless 
profit at the expense of the energetic and saving ; while 
after the outset, the shiftless would, just as now, soon 
waste what they had, not only in extravagance but in 
foolish schemes, and want a new division; and there 
would then be less to divide: the shiftless would have 
00c /^, ^*t. already used up their share; and com- 

235 (d). and then . ^ ^ ^^^ ^ i r 

there would be munism would havc taken away irom 
less than now. Ability all temptation to produce more 
than it could keep — that is to say, more than the 
average ; and would take from frugality all temptation 
to save more than the average. 
235 (e). Meaning- To carry out any scheme of communism, 

less without . i j r i •j.t. x 

robbery. government would 01 course have either to 

rob the present means of production — factories, mines, 
etc. — from those who have produced and saved, or to 
buy them under eminent domain (78). 

As to eminent domain, of course the communists 
differ among themselves, as people advocating ideas 
that do not hold together, inevitably must; some 
advocate eminent domain, while some go so far as to 
say that all property is robbery — that people of ability 
and frugality have stolen from those who lack them, 
and that the community, in taking all the land and 
mines and factories and railroads without pay, would 
only take posseSvSion of its own. 

But even government's exercising eminent domain 



§235/] Personal Property. 223 

over everything, and paying for it, would leave things 
just as they are. Everybody would get paid for what 
he has, and be taxed all he has, to pay it. 

A practical difficulty not yet stated, is 
of wealth cannot be '^ow to divide Up a tcu-thousand-dollar 
'being'^destr^o^^^^^^ house, or buildiug-lot, or diamond or 
picture or statue, so as to give each person 
his twelve hundred dollars. If an attempt were made 
to give each a share in the diamond, for instance, it 
is hard to tell what ten of them could do with it. They 
probably could not hire it out to some vain woman 
each night : for, as nobody would be worth more than 
$1,200, no woman could pretend the diamond to be 
hers. As to the picture and statue, perhaps they 
could be exhibited, if enough people worth only $1,200 
apiece would pay to see them. But as to the house 
and building-lot, nobody could afford to live in the house 
or even to make it over into a tenement; and nobody 
could afford to build on the lot, unless under a syndicate 
arrangement. People who object to corporations are 
generally the very ones who would make it necessary 
for everything worth over $1,200, to be run by a cor- 
poration. 

There appears, then, to be no escaping the general 
conclusion that civilization rests largely on things that 
cost more than a thousand dollars apiece, and which 
cannot be divided, or even used to any advantage when 
held in shares; and that these things are the prizes 
which Nature holds out to men of great ability, to 
stimulate them to do all they can to invent and organize 
and regulate, so as to increase and cheapen things for 
the public good. Consequently, if you want to intro- 
duce Communism, you must begin by wiping civiliza- 
tion out. In short. Nature did not make this for a com- 
munistic world, but as one where wealth is the first 
condition of effective industry and the highest art, as 
well as the legitimate stimulus to invention, energy and 
capacity, and their legitimate reward. 

But that is, of course, a hard conclusion for the men 
lacking in invention, energy and capacity; and among 



2 24 The Protection of Rights. [§ 235 / 

the many ways proposed for making them as well off 
as anybody, there are many which do not involve the 
impossibilities of Communism, altho they all have im- 
possibilities of their own. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

PERSONAL PROPERTY (CONTINUED). 

Schemes for Distributing it more Evenly {Continued), 

(II) Socialism. 

Chief among the schemes for giving 
the lazy and incapable the rewards of the 
industrious and capable, without attempting to divide 
everything, is that of merely putting all industries 
under the control of government, and dividing up 
product equally, and thus giving the poor an equal 
share in the profits. This is Socialism. 

The idea at least does away with the objection to 
dividing up or holding-in-common things which would 
be useless if divided up or held in common, and it at 
least glozes over the objection to putting the capital 
of the frugal directly into the hands of the shiftless: 
it wants merely the product given to them. It pro- 
poses, instead, to put the capital in the hands of the 
politicians, and have them give the shiftless an even 
share of the product — so far as the politicians make 
any — and do not keep it for themselves. That would 
at least divide up among the poor the profits now 
wasted by the rich, if the politicians were honest, and 
if the profits were to be produced. But as profits 
depend on Ability, and Ability needs them to stimu- 
late it, if you take them away from Ability, to divide 
up among those who lack Ability, it is pretty hard to 
see who is going to produce them. But at least every- 

225 



2 26 The Protection of Rights. [§236 a 

body would get wages : there would be no unemployed. 
But nobody would get as much wages as 
M^not^rilT now. As soou as Ability flags, demand 
for the labor for which Ability finds work, 
must flag, and wages must fall; invention must flag; 
production must flag, and the world must grow poorer. 

If government is to keep the demand for labor con- 
stant, the question is: who is to pay it from decreased 
production ? 

Ability might be stimulated to increase production 
by giving it high office in superintending government 
„„„ ,, , , .. industries, but to only a limited extent in 

236 rW. Impmcti- / J I r J 

cabiiity of poiiti- any Condition can we loresee, and tor two 
cat management. ^^^^ rcasons. We uow seldom pay govern- 
ment officers salaries that honest men, unless already 
well off, can afford to accept; and as long as the base 
and ignorant are permitted to vote, and so often elect 
the base and ignorant to office, the best men could not be 
put in office as often as necessary, even if we were 
wise enough to pay them properly. So far, even those 
who can afford it, do not always take office when it 
is offered them, because of the humiliating obligations 
to the bosses that office sometimes imposes. The great 
difficulty even now is to get government officers who 
can and will do even the simplest things honestly: it 
is one of our great misfortunes that the men capable 
of guiding industry cannot often enough be got into 
public office of any kind. 

If, then, we had to depend for the good conduct of all 
our industries, on the combinations of circumstances 
where good men can get office and will take it, those com- 
_--,,, ^ binations so seldom occur, that, altho 

yvu fQj Losses to 

education, charity there are many good and patriotic men in 
and liberty. ^g^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ instead of having the best 

brains competing with each other, as now, to supply 
our wants cheaply and in great variety, we should have 
to put up with what men capable only in politics, might 
provide. 

There is nothing in the socialist argument that because 
government already secures (if it does) fairly compe- 



§236^] Personal Property. 227 

tent managers for a few natural monopolies, it can secure 
them for productive industries, because monopolies 
yield results with much poorer management. 

The same is true of the argument from government's 
securing more or less competent managers of education, 
including the museums, and gardens of botany and 
zoology. In fact, the managers have been very seldom 
secured by any pure democracy — especially by ours, 
which has no aristocratic traditions. Our managers for 
such institutions are most all secured by close private 
corporations, and no such managers aim at cheap pro- 
duction, or even great financial results for themselves: 
they do their work mainly from love of it and for per- 
sonal development. 

236 (d). Forcing One of the sclicmcs of socialism is to 
Ability. force ability to guide labor, just as it is 

to force the laborers to work. But while a man can be 
forced to work in some sort of fashion with his body, 
there is no forcing him to do his best with his mind. 
He can only be tempted. 

"Well, then", some socialists ask, "why not pay 
men of ability large incomes to serve the public? " But 
that they get large incomes now, is what most of the 
socialists complain of. Yet now the men of ability are 
not sure of the incomes; if they were sure of their 
incomes as salaries, they would no longer have a stimulus 
to do their best. Yet to give them, instead of salaries, 
large, but necessarily uncertain, shares of production, 
would be to give them just what they are getting now, 
and just what the socialists want to take away from 
them. Should real socialism come in then, it can only 
come in by reducing the production of Ability. 
00c / . TA In answer to this, it may be urged that 

23o(e). The argu- ' -^ ^ ., ^. 

ment from expert- govemnient has already been building 
^"^^' houses for the poor, supplying them with 

water and light, and making boots and clothes for armies 
at a saving; that a great many people sadly lack these 
good things and most others; and that all the things 
made by private enterprise are often made at wages that 



228 The Protection of Rights. [§ 236 ^ 

afford but little comfort. But what has been done in 
housebuilding and gas and even water, has not yet been 
shown to have been successfully done. We must not 
forget that agitation has already been strong in England 
— ^the very headquarters of "municipal trading", to 
drive government back toward its old functions of pro- 
tecting rights. 

When things have been supplied by 

236 (f). Can be 4. r . i j j 

undertaken when government lor the army and navy, and 
own7u^tomer.'^^ ('^^^ ^^ ^ ^^^^ degree) in the case of gas 
and electric light, there was a certainty of 
the customer. The government stood ready to take 
the clothes for the army and the light for the streets; 
and the producer made army and navy supplies only 
to the government's order. There was no call for 
some of the rarest and most difficult powers of Ability 
— finding custom, avoiding bad debts, and anticipat- 
ing just what and just how much the market is going 
to require. True, if nobody but the government 
produced anything for the people, government would 
be sure of its customers. But no more customers 
would have the money to pay then than now, and those 
having it might like a choice of shops, and even of articles. 
They might not like to dress in Tammany style. Be- 
sides, we do not all dress in uniform, and it is only in 
uniform that government has yet succeeded as a tailor. 
236 (g) Private '^^^ government could of course have a 
initiative essential great many shops and styles, but if they 
to variety. were all under the management of Tam- 

many Hall, they would be apt to be the sort of shops 
that prudent people avoid; and altho the government 
officers would not nominally be conducting the shops 
for their own profit, and tho some really might not, we 
know from experience that too many would. 

Government could still leave the private shops open, 
but only if it courted failure. Managers chosen by 
Nature to control political pulls, could never compete 
with those chosen by Nature to manage industry. 
There is no argument that they could, in the fact that 
government railways and tramways are often operated 



^ 2^ h] Personal Property. 229 

side by side with private ones : for all have monopolies 
of their own routes. To succeed in competitive business, 
236 r/?;. General government would have to take away the 
gouernment pro- citizen 's powcr to purchase anywhere he 

duction attacks , i • - j.i i • • i 

Property, Contract plcased, just as the extreme municipal 
and Chanty. traders are beginning to do in England now. 

This would not only deprive him of the benefits of Com- 
petition, but of two other institutions that men have been 
laboring upon through all civilization, and upon which, 
in fact, all civilization rests: I mean Private Property 
and Contract. With them would go production itself, 
all education of a higher grade than government pro- 
vides, and the very possibility of charity. 

The scheme would upset the institution of Private 
Property, because private property is simply one of the 
consequences of ability. Other things even, a man will 
have as much of one as of the other; tho of course 
other things are not always even, because an able man 
may deliberately devote his abilities to something that 
he knows will not pay much, and sometimes "accidents " 
come in. Still, any system that denies ability free 
swing, at once attacks the right to create property. 

The system would attack Contract, because if the 
state is the only employer of Capital, Ability and Labor, 
of course any one of them has to accept what employ- 
ment the state gives, on the state's own terms. No one 
of them has any more opportunity to contract, on terms 
satisfactory to itself, than the veriest slave born to re- 
main in his status. 

The scheme attacks Charity, those who advocate it 
would say, by doing away with all needs of charity; 
but those who oppose it say that there would be more 
need of charity than now, because there would be less 
production ; and there would be no surplus of wealth in 
anybody's hands to be willingly spared for charities and 
the higher education. The idea that people with the 
moderate incomes that all would then have, would con- 
sent to be taxed for such things, is of course advanced, 
but is too absurd to be worth discussing. 



230 The Protection of Rights. [§ 236 i 

236 0). Futility of ^^ government paid in bonds for the 
attempting it by present means of production (there is not 
eminent domain. Ynonej enough to pay), bonds must bear 
interest, and even if government management should 
produce the interest (which it probably would not), 
where Vv^ould be the gain in government simply working 
the industries, and paying away all the production above 
wages (if any), in the form of interest on the bonds, 
to the same people who now work out the interest 
for themselves ? Of course people generally would then 
236 (jh Effect on get all that the industries might produce 
laborers. ovcr and abovc the interest on the bonds, 

but after wages and interest were paid (assuming that 
they would be paid), the surplus would not be enough 
to be worth considering. The wealth that the socialists 
are after could not reach them in that way any more 
than it does now: for the simple reason that no more 
would be produced than now (if as much), and, as the 
census reports of present industries show, even if pro- 
duction were kept up to the present standard, an even 
division would not yield an average of much more than 
two dollars a day for each wage-earner, even putting the 
managers and their shares in with the rest. 

But advocates of the scheme say there would be 
more, because they think that under socialism, most 
men, having so much more interest in the production, 
would work that much the harder. But there seem 
to be a good many men who, if they were 
llVa^Jiness^^"^'""^ ^^"^^ ^^ sharing the product, as in the 
Paris public shops, and under the English 
poor law (34), would not work at all. Unless a boss 
has the power of discharge, it is hard to see who is 
effectively to tell the workman what to do to make 
his work count. 

In Paris the government officers did not have the 
power of discharge, but if they have, what becomes of 
the socialism.? Men could not be forced to work pro- 
ductively, and even if that were possible, it would be 
only by bringing the free citizen back under the slave's 
lash. 



^ 2 7,6 m] Personal Property. 231 

236 (I), v^ouid de- Moreover, government would have to 
stroy freedom. -j-gj^ people how and wlien they should 
work — a man would no longer be able to choose where 
he should work and what he should work at, and what 
he should take for his work, nor where he should buy 
and of what producer he should buy: for there would 
be but one producer — ^the enormous government trust. 
The whole thing would be a slavery more minute than 
any yet devised. There is no control as senseless as that 
of a majority. The scheme of socialism is that each shall 
be the slave of all : this in spite of the fact that civiliza- 
tion had been made by able men choosing work, doing 
it, and directing it, in their own interest. Even if they 
have had to direct slaves, it was the masters who made 
the civilization, not the slaves. True, the laborers in 
Greece and Rome were slaves, and those countries 
managed to cut a very decent figure, but the voters were 
not slaves. 

236 (m). The un- But in our present state, socialism is 
employed. couutcd upou to disposc of the terrible 

question of the unemployed, and to give everybody 
good wages, but many people have not the ability to 
earn good wages. Then the socialists ask: why not 
have government give good wages anyhow? You 
admit that government should promote the general con- 
venience in many ways : why not in the most important 
way of all — give what it has become the fashion to call 
a "living wage"? Ought not everybody to have a 
decent living? Yes, if he can earn it; and of course 
everybody ought to be able to earn a decent living, 
just as everybody ought to be decent. But unfortu- 
nately, not everybody is; and we have already seen the 
effect of the attempt to give everybody decent wages, 
under the English poor law, and in the French public 
workshops (34). It is better a thousand times to receive 
charity direct than disguised as unearned wages. That 
step would fatally lower the standard of industry and 
— ^what is far worse — the standard of morality: one is 
frank mendicancy, the other is disguised robbery. 



232 The Protection of Rights. [§237 

237. Names Social- Enthusiasts for any specific panacea 
viduaiism. naturally invent a name for it, and then 

gravitate into some one name for all methods out- 
side of it. As soon as the two names are contrasted, 
they give an impression of- equal weight in the re- 
spective ideas which they connote. But this impres- 
sion is very misleading. Thus while the disciples of 
Hahnemann (if there are any real "high dilutionists " 
left) apply the term homeopathy to their doctrine, in 
the apparently balanced term allopathy they include 
all the doctrines that have been accumulated outside 
of their own. On one side, the word homeopathy in- 
cludes only one idea on the subject; but on the other 
side, the word allopathy includes all the experience of 
the human race. The same is true of the words 
socialism and individualism. To the superficial, they 
appear to represent two ideas that balance each other; 
but the fact is that socialism expresses a mere theory, 
and represents no experience whatever; while individ- 
ualism stands for the whole of human experience on 
the subject. Socialism has never been tried, all the 
progress of mankind has been made under ' ' individual- 
ism". Greater and faster progress may be possible 
under socialism, as it may be under any scheme that 
any theorist proposes; but there is no experience to 
prove that it will be, while every atom of experience so 
far, goes to prove that it will not. It must be con- 
ceded, however, that the proof is not absolutely con- 
clusive, any more than is the proof that two and two 
will not sometime make five, or that men will not some- 
time live forever. It may even be farther conceded 
that in vast periods of time, there may be possible 
changes iii human nature that may make socialism 
possible. There are even some grounds for conceding 
that there are visible factors working in the direction 
of such changes in human nature, and this concession 
may be made even in face of the facts that while these 
words are being written, the New York papers hold 
circus advertisements attracting people to see a young 
woman and an automobile turning somersaults in the 



§ 237 ^] Personal Property. 235 

air, the attractions of the performance being enhanced 
by calHng it "The Dip of Death". But no more than 
all this can reasonably be conceded, and even these 
concessions leave no room to think of socialism as 
workable under any conditions so near as to be of 
any practical interest to any living man. 

There have been a considerable number of people, 
from Ruskin and Tolstoy down, whose emotion and 
imagination are far in excess of their information and 
reflection, and who jump in fancy to the realization 
of the socialistic dreams, without studying what founda- 
tion Nature has provided for them ; or if a foundation 
is possible, how long must be taken to evolve it. 

This word socialism has lately come into 
l^IJgle name!'^"^ such vcry frcqucut use (and abuse) that it 
calls for a little more consideration. In 
a long-past -midnight discussion between the present 
writer and an eminent professor of sociology, and an 
eminent speculative writer on Utopias, the last two of 
whom call themselves socialists, all three found them- 
selves agreed that government ownership of monop- 
oly franchises, and regulation of their operation by 
lessees for limited terms, is all that can reasonably 
be advocated under present conditions. The two 
"socialists" then claimed that their interlocutor, in 
agreeing with them, admitted himself a socialist. His 
counterclaim was that they, in agreeing with him, 
proved themselves not to be socialists; whereupon the 
two agreed between themselves that they needed a new 
word to indicate their real position; and an ineffect- 
ive resort was made to the Greek dictionaries. If new 
labels are to be found for all the different positions 
held by those now included under the label socialism, 
all the dictionaries will be worked pretty hard; and 
probably names for the modern ideas will have to be 
constructed from the modern languages. 

The fact is that the word socialism is now made 
to do duty for^ nearly every hoped-for cure of the 
defects of society — indeed for nearly every dream, how- 



234 The Protection of Rights. [§237 a 

ever wild, of better conditions. Nearly every unedu- 
cated or unevenly educated person who is dissatisfied 
with existing conditions, calls himself a socialist, and 
many call themselves so on account of some opinion 
that may be anywhere from a belief that poverty is a 
bad thing, up to a conviction that if the state owned 
and administered all the means of production, poverty 
would disappear. Between the extreme positions, are 
at least the following stopping-places, some of the 
occupants of any one of which, like to call themselves 
socialists, and discriminating labels for each of which 
may be desirable: I. The state should regulate much 
237 (b). At least niorc thoroughly the use of all natural 
three meanings, monopolies, including the municipal fran- 
chises — waterworks, trolleys, lighting plants, etc. II. 
Municipalities should not part with the fees of their 
franchises for these things, but only lease them, 
so as to control them more effectively, and get 
the benefit of the unearned increment. III. Munici- 
palities — or the state — or the nation, should operate 
the franchises as well as own them. Now many men 
who hold the doctrines up to this point, would warmly 
disclaim the name of socialist, and probably very few 
persons entitled to speak with authority would apply 
that name to any step short of government going be- 
yond the farthest of these points, to a fourth — beyond 
the natural monopolies, and appropriating the means of 
production which are not naturally monopolistic. 
238. Socialism I^ "this fourth use of the term, socialism 

against competition, means taking out of the fields of com- 
petition the things wherein competition is possible — 
depriving the world of the initiative and energy that 
competition breeds — of what has been well called "the 
life of trade". While up to this point, government ac- 
tivity certainly should increase with government ability 
— in other words, with political intelligence and m.orality, 
beyond this point government interference with what 
we ordinarily mean by "industries", would be inter- 
ference with what has raised society above the stage 
of mere militarism. 



§ 240] Personal Property. 235 

To the claim that socialism could have 
foM'ndividuai?sm?° i"aised Society, and have raised it better, 
one answer is that it never did; and 
another answer is that no considerable body of pro- 
fessed socialists have ever agreed on the details for 
working out any consistent scheme by which they them- 
selves claim that it ever could. On the contrary, they 
are always quarreling among themselves. Moreover, 
there is no reasonable doubt that the best results of 
what various men claim could be attained by the variety 
of schemes which they call socialism, are being more and 
more attained through the only process of which the 
world has had experience — through individual capacity 
competing for private property, and voluntarily apply- 
ing an increased portion of private property toward the 
results that all good socialists and all good men desire. 

o.n o ■ !■ A Most of the people who believe in so- 
240. Socialism and . ,. , , 1 -, . \ 

Magic an illustra- cialism (whatever they may mean by it) 

'°"' attribute to it the power to produce these 

results by some sort of magic. For instance, after the 
San Francisco earthquake, the New York Times con- 
tained the following interesting letter : 

How Earthquakes and Fires would Lose Their Terror 
UNDER Socialism. 

To the Editor of The New York Times: 

In the first place such a horror would not be possible under 
established Socialism, for every building constructed by and 
for a socialist system of society would be fire-proof, and in a 
great measure earthquake-proof. Cheap, flimsy, crowded, in- 
flammable, and unsafe constructions would find no place in a 
city built for use and not for profit. 

Given, however, present conditions, but with Socialism just 
adopted as a National system, the disaster at San Francisco, 
aside from the irreparable loss of life, would simply mean 
that each of us throughout the co-operated Nation had suffered 
a loss equivalent to a few hours of our productive labor. The 
whole resource and energy of the Nation would be aroused to 
replace San Francisco in a grander, more beautiful condition than 
ever before. The haunting fear of want that now oppresses 
thousands that were accounted well-to-do citizens would not be 
present. Thousands whose lives are shipwrecked by this 
calamity, and whom the most generous aid possible under 



236 The Protection of Rights. [§240 

capitalism cannot restore to hope and happiness, would, in a 
few weeks, recover their full former condition. With hope 
assured, they would rebuild their city on lines of beauty and 
safety, drawing on the surplus wealth of the co-operated Nation 
for all labor and materials required. In that new city none of 
the dives, traps, or squalid quarters which are now wiped out 
would ever be replaced. With no incentive for greed, graft 
or unjust gain the city of the Golden Gate would arise the 
gem of the Pacific Coast. The temporary loss, in all except 
the loss of life, would result in lasting gain by affording the 
opportunity to build the City Beautiful. Private land titles 
would not obstruct the public welfare, and the lesson would be 
worth all the fearful cost. Capitalism, with all its generous 
impulses, now temporarily aroused, cannot succeed as Socialism 
would do. 

This is a wider extension of socialism than I remember 
seeing proposed before. All the earlier propositions that 
I have seen, seem to have indicated that all the property 
of relatively small communities — states at the utmost, 
should be owned by all the citizens in common, irre- 
spective of who devises it, produces it, or preserves 
it. There seem to be fatal objections to even that 
scheme, among them its mad injustice; but the 
objections do not appear to have deterred this writer 
from proposing to have all the property in America 
owned collectively by all the people in America — a 
scheme that would involve difficulties of administration 
so far beyond any now faced, as to be simply unimagi- 
nable. 

241 Present Possibly the Writer did not realize how 

agencies toward far, under the despised agencies now at 
same en s. work, the losses of San Francisco actually 

are distributed. For instance, not to speak of the 
subscriptions for relief, eighteen millions of the losses 
are to be paid by insurance companies in the little city 
of Hartford alone. And the stock of those companies 
is by no means all owned in Hartford, but is distributed 
through the whole country. Considerable of the insur- 
ance thus distributed is in England: so the socialist's 
dream of our all being ''members of one another" is 
already realized through the sordid channels of self- 
interest, more widely even than in his dream: for that 



§ 242] Personal Property. 237 

stopped at the borders of our own land. Moreover, 
such sharing of each other's losses — and gains too, is 
constantly increasing. 

Yet his completed picture is at least a beautiful one. 
No one can doubt that the results of his prophecies are 
desirable, but how are they to be attained any faster 
than we are slowly approaching them now ? The only 
indication given in the letter is that "socialism" should 
be "adopted as a national system" — apparently that 
Congress should pass some sort of a law, or that some 
sort of a constitutional amendment should be passed, 
to the effect that everything shall be owned by every- 
body, share and share alike; and that everything shall 
be done for everybody by everybody else, combined as 
the state; and that nobody shall have anything or do 
anything for his selfish self alone. When this law or 
constitutional amendment is passed, nobody shall be 
selfish or grasping, or inclined to hide away anything, or 
do scamped work, or disobey any laws that may there- 
after be enacted. 

Then the men with capacity enough to direct building 
operations, will be made more honest and capable by 
depriving them of their property and rewards, and 
paying them the same that the men they direct are paid. 
They are going to be more careful, energetic, resourceful 
—in short, build better buildings, because they can get 
no direct benefit from building better buildings. 

Some people who call themselves socialists would say : 
' ' Oh no ! They must be paid in proportion to what they 
accomplish." But that is just what the world has been 
trying to bring about for several thousands of years, and 
has come a great deal nearer to bringing about during 
the past century or two than ever before ; and it is just 
what nine hundred and ninety-nine "socialists" in a 
thousand do not want: they want everybody paid the 
same, no matter what each accomplishes. 

We already have laws in most cities 

fawns' and 3es.'" ^^^ moderately secure building; but in 

spite of them, much crazy building goes on. 

But our socialist seems to think that if we pass a law 



238 The Protection of Rights. [§242 

requiring many times the care from builders that is 
anywhere required now, if we will merely include it 
with a lot of other laws under the label "socialism", 
people are going to obey the laws better; and that 
if these laws remove all reward of care, such laws will 
secure the care. 

Or can our writer intend to go so far as to imply that 
if the wisdom of Leland Stanford and his trustees had 
been replaced by that of the average building commission 
which universal suffrage would provide ; and if the name 
socialistic were given to such commission, it would turn 
out better v^ork than Stanford and his trustees did. 

After the great Baltimore fire, wise and generous 
people hoped to "rebuild their city on lines of beauty 
and safety", but the majority, who consisted of stupid 
and selfish people, prevented all but a moiety of the 
schemes from being carried out. Now it would be 
interesting to know how long, on an average, the social- 
ists think it would take the stupid and selfish people 
who constitute the majority of the inhabitants of 
San Francisco and of all other places yet discovered 
outside of socialistic dreams, to pass a set of laws, even 
under the label of socialism, that would really "rebuild 
their city on lines of beauty and safety " more effectually 
than it is going to be built under present laws ; and how 
much longer it would take them to get the laws carried 
out after they had passed them. 

All the ingenuity and morality that San Francisco 
has been able to muster, have been trying for half a 
century to get rid of the city's "dives, traps and squalid 
quarters ' ' ; but Chinatown has gone on burrowing under 
itself, and then under its burrows. 

"And there would be no incentive for greed, graft 
and unjust gain", says our prophet under the inspira- 
tion of socialism. All over the world, since even long 
before Christianity came, good men have been legisla- 
ting against "greed, graft and unjust gain", but these 
things continue. If the ingenuity and morality that 
have been fighting them, had labeled their efforts 
socialism, would they have had an access of magic 



§ 243] Personal Property. 239 

power? Or would they have had to change the char- 
acter of their efforts? If so, why didn't they? Because 
they had not enotigk wisdom or conscience? How long 
then will it take to acquire enough wisdom and con- 
science to work socialism, assuming that enough of both 
may sometime be within human attainment? And by 
what methods are the wisdom and conscience to be 
attained, other than the preaching, teaching and general 
discipline of life, that have given us our present modest 
supply of those desirable qualities. Would labeling 
ourselves socialists create them? Would the label be 
more effective than the label "Christian" has so far 
been? Would the label give ''Capitalism with all its 
generous impulses, now temporarily aroused", a more 
chronic amenability to those influences? And could 
the label be effectively put on "Capitalism", if by that 
word is meant the capacity which accumulates capital, 
without materially impairing its effectiveness? 

In short, is the word socialism as used in the letter, 
anything more than a name for a dream so far beyond 
any means of realization, as to make it of no interest, 
except as an ideal, to any living being; and a dream, 
like most dreams, full of inconsistencies that make it 
only dreamable — not thinkable? 

243. Another ^^ may be worth while to spend a few 

specimen. minutes with one more of the latest of 

these philosophers.* He sums up his preface by 
asserting that the capitalist must learn that socialism 
•"demands the right, nothing more or less than the 
right". As if the problem of the ages, only gradually 
approaching solution, and never quite to reach it, were 
not simply what is "the right"! 

He says: "The gateway of opportunity has been 
closed, and closed for all time. Rockefeller has shut 
the door on oil . . . and Carnegie on steel." As if 
these two men had not probably set more young men 
on their feet than any two men in history! 

* Jack London : War of the Classes, 



240 The Protection of Rights. [§ 243 

He says: "The proletariat will possess itself of the 
government . . . and run the business of the country 
in its own interest." As if one man in a score could 
run business at all, and as if he would not keep a 
reasonably careful eye on his own interest rather than 
that of the country! 

He says: "The working-class is no longer losing its 
strongest and most capable members. There men 
denied room for their ambition in the capitalist ranks 
remain to be the leaders of the workers." As if the 
leaders of the capitalists were not now more from the 
working-class than ever before! 

He farther says : ' ' Either the functions of private cor- 
porations will increase till they absorb the central govern- 
ment, or the functions of government will increase till 
it absorbs the corporations." Either the inroads of the 
sea will increase till it covers the land, or the waste 
from the land will increase till it fills up the sea. Both 
sets of propositions seem to mean something, but, like 
the phrase of the irresistible ball striking the impene- 
trable wall, they mean nothing. 

244. Need and ^ favorite expression of the ideals of 

Desert. socialism is: "From each according to his 

ability, to each according to his need"; and if desert 
were generally measured by need, a beautiful expres- 
sion it would be. But the melancholy fact is that, 
despite many exceptions, desert generally varies in- 
versely as need — the deserving are not generally needy, 
and the needy are not generally deserving. Change* 
the expression to "From each according to his ability, 
to each according to his desert", and you have a 
very intelligible and respectable ideal, and one toward 
which all the ages have been stumbling, and toward 
which every wise philanthropy, every good law, every 
enlarged communication, every facilitation of supply 
and demand meeting each other, every honest trade 
and every honest job, are leading up; and from which 
ever}^ enervating and confusing dream, every disguised 
robbery, every pauperizing charity, every unworkable 



§ 245] Personal Property. 241 

statute, every obstruction of demand and supply, every 
dishonest trade and every scamped job, are keeping us 
back. 

Try to reach the ideal by any shorter cut, try to 
determine each man's desert by anything but the re- 
sults of his efforts, and who is to make the decision — 
a committee of Tammany Hall, or of a legislature, or 
of Congress, or of the labor trusts, or of the capital 
trusts? In regard to the very needy, it has long been 
attempted by government charity, by hospital and prison 
boards, by committees of churches, and by charity or- 
ganizations. So far it has been very imperfectly done, 
but no man has yet proposed any hopeful organization 
for doing it faster. It is going to be done better — im- 
perceptibly better to-morrow than to-day, a trifle better 
next week than this week, perceptibly better the next 
decade than this decade, and noticeably better — better 
with even a much greater difference, this century than 
the last century; as it was vastly better the last century 
than the century before. And all this betterment is 
to come from improvement in the agencies we know, 
and from better ones evolved from them. But it is to 
be less rather than greater, because of all revolutions at- 
tempted by unreasoning sentimentality, and rallied 
under phrases that inflame the imagination, but fall 
to pieces when searched for coherent meanings or prac- 
tical policies. 

245. Hige-pressure Regarding the attempt to give govern- 
progress. ment more to do, the socialist says that 

the old ship of state under the orthodox sixty pounds 
of steam, is carrying us forward too slowly — that it is 
but mathematics that if we square the pressure, we 
will double the speed. Give her 3,600 pounds, and we 
shall go forty miles an hour where we now go twenty. 
The sober student says that long before we get up to 
3,600 pounds, the whole thing wiU be blown to flinders. 
And while the sociaHst is dancing around and calling 
for his 3,600 pounds of steam, the inventor and educator 
and sane philanthropist are evolving a quadruple-ex- 
pansion engine to take us the forty miles. But the old 



242 The Protection of Rights. [§245 

ship of state is not built for speed: she is a burden- 
carrier, loaded down with the faults and imperfections 
of the average man. 

?4fi Socialism Apparently, the only way of making the 

when possible, will Socialist scheme work, is making voters so 
be needless. intelligent that they will elect only the 

best men, and making the best men so unselfish that 
they will work for others as well as they work for them- 
selves. On that basis, as it has taken some ten thou- 
sand years of recorded history to get us up to the 
present Senate of the United States, possibly ten 
thousand more might give us a governing body that 
could work socialism, but when people are able to 
work socialism, they will be able to take care of them- 
selves without it. 

Human affairs are so involved with each 
civHization^^'^ °^ other that Spencer very justly compares 
them to a web. You cannot lift a single 
strand without power enough to lift the adjoining 
.strands ; and you cannot lift a strand very far, without 
power enough to lift the whole with that strand. 



CHAPTER XX. 

PERSONAL PROPERTY (CONTINUED). 

Schemes for Distributing it more Evenly (Continued) . 

(Ill) Trade-union Coercion. 

In times of peace, the forefront of politics is apt 
to be occupied by schemes of magic betterment. So- 
ciaHsm and the schemes springing from trade-unionism 
are now competing for that position. It is not prac- 
ticable to give the former any farther treatment here. 
Regarding the latter, of all the impracticable schemes 
for equalizing the distribution of production, the one 
which is now probably deluding more people than all 
others, is Labor-Union Coercion to raise wages higher 
than the demand for goods and services will pay. 

As justice can be reached only through 
sup^niJ'of labor! "^^^ natural flow of supply and demand, to 
obstruct either by any sort of coercion, 
is to go counter to natural law, and going counter to 
natural law is one of the best definitions of immorality. 
But tho this principle is very simple, the application 
of it is often far from simple : every event is the result 
of many forces, and it is seldom that one force can 
be justly considered without reference to the rest. 
There is nothing more in accord with natural law 
than respect for Hfe, and yet often respect for natural 
laws, involves disregarding life. For instance: regard 
for one's own life often calls for disregard for the life 
of another. So circumstances sometimes arise when 

243 



244 ^^^ Protection of Rights. [§ 248 

morality requires a disregard of the natural flow of 
supply and demand. But those circumstances are 
probably all exceptional and abnormal. At the time 
of the San Francisco earthquake, the equation of sup- 
ply and demand would often have required prices for 
food and water that even the consciences of the sellers 
would not permit. In that case, however, and in most 
similar cases, the short supply and the excessive de- 
mand did not result from human volition; and in the 
case of taking another's life to defend one's own, the 
conjuncture does not result from the volition of the per- 
son taking the extreme course. Indeed, it is probably 
safe to say that all situations which justify action that 
is ordinarily reprehensible, are forced upon the actor by 
outside conditions — ^usually by the reprehensible con- 
duct of another. On this principle it is probably true 
that action counter to the natural flow of 
onfy^in^self-Zfence. supply and demand is sometimes justifiable, 
but only when some natural catastrophe 
has already interfered, or when some unwarrantable act 
of man has made the case one of self-defence. 

Ordinarily justice can float in only on 
fup^ply^Kbor!"^ fluid competition, and until both sides pro- 
mote fluid competition instead of obstruct- 
ing it, justice will be impeded. Some employers try 
artificially to increase the supply of labor by m^aking a 
given amount of money pay so large a number of men that 
they cannot have needed food and comfort, and by get- 
ting men to work so many hours that they cannot have 
needed rest and recreation. Trade-unions came into 
being to artificially limit the supply of labor, as a defence 
against such employers. But having found that some- 
times wages can be increased, hours shortened, and condi- 
tions improved by strikes, the unionists have jumped to 
the false conclusion that they generally can, and have 
gone on striking in season and out of season, until lately 
they have lost more from idleness during strikes than 
they have gained between them. They have at the 
same time made serious inroads on the capital of the 
employers from which their wages come, and on the 



§ 250 b] Personal Property. 245 

capital of the community which calls for their work. 

They have also reasoned that, as a strike, to be 
efficient, must be close, it is justifiable to bring out- 
siders into the union by any means whatever. 

The idea regarding wages is a fallacy, and that 
regarding coercion of non-unionists is a mistaken and 
immoral assumption. 

As wages are represented in cost of prod- 

/luUi W3ff6S n6C6S" , .1 . 1*1 J ^ ji 

sariiy limited uct, they cannot go higher than the commu- 
(a). by demand nity is willing to pay. Neither can they be 
materially raised by diminishing capital's 
share of product: for the capital in any trade made 
unprofitable by excessive wages, would first seek a 
more profitable investment; failing that, a more prof- 
itable country; and failing that, would tend to be 
consumed, as not worth saving. In any one of the 
cases, wages cannot stay at a point where they drive 
capital out. So with Ability, if wages get too high 
to leave Ability's profits in proportion to its degree, 
it will forsake the industry, and the laborers will be 
"out of work". 

250 (b). by com- The attempt to raise wages above the 
petition. normal can only succeed, even for a time, 

for but a part of the men, and must leave some unem- 
ployed. As Professor Laughlin well said in an ad- 
dress before the Citizens' Industrial Association of 
America : 

"It means always and inevitably, the existence of non-union 
men, against whom the unions must constantly wage war. 
Under this system, high wages for some within a union can 
be maintained only by the sacrifice of others without the union. 
In short, the union scale of wages can be kept only by driving 
all other competitors from the field. The monopoly is only 
artificial, not real. . . . 

"But if all laborers were unionists, the situation would be the 
same, as regards supply, as if there were no unions. . . . Then 
the rate of wages for all in any one occupation can never be 
more than that rate which will warrant the employment of 
all — that is, the market rate. . . . 

"Obviously the union rate can be maintained only by limiting 
the supply of labor to members of the union and by driving 
out the non-union competitors. Consequently, the inevitable 



246 The Protection of Rights. - [§ 250 6 

outcome of the present policy of many labor organizations, is 
lawlessness, and an array of power against the State. Having 
only an artificial monopoly of labor, their purposes can be 
successfully carried out only by force and intimidation." 

250 (c). by invert- Moreovcr, high wages tempt to labor- 
^''^"- saving invention. This is well illustrated 

by the discovery of the New York bricklayers in the 
summer of 1905, that the substitution of concrete for 
bricks was taking away their means of livelihood. 
These bricklayers had one of the strongest of unions, 
and had driven their nominal wages up to four or five 
dollars a day. Their real wages for a year or two had 
not been much over half their nominal ones: for the 
nominal ones had been obtained through the notorious 
building strikes with their accompanying idleness. In 
the spring of 1905, after the city's long deprivation of 
builders, the demand for them was ravenous, and 
the bricklayers expected a season of unprecedented 
prosperity. But paying high wages had set builders 
to experimenting, and to discovering that a dollar-and- 
a-half laborer with a supply of cement and small stone, 
could mix and pour into moulds more wall in a day 
than a five-dollar laborer could lay with bricks. 

Invention, then, puts a limit to possible wages, as 
effectually as does the choking of demand that high 
wages must cause, or the competition of labor attracted 
from trades where wages are lower. The disregard of these 
unescapable facts by the unions has cost them dearly. 

Yet the unionists may acknowledge the force of what 
has been said, and still doubt if they have at the time 
reached the possible limit of wages. They are doubly 
ready to doubt it when they consider the wealth in other 
hands; and as they are not inclined to the slow and 
arduous ways that placed it there, and do not often 
possess the ability to take those ways, they are naturally 
prone to the strike. But of late they have so often 
exercised it only to demonstrate its fallacy — to reach 
through times of privation a scale of wages so high that 
the public will not pay it — that they miust be getting 
some inklins: that the method is fallacious. 



§ 252] Personal Property. 247 

The other assumption of the unions — 
& fof c'oi"rS^' that any method— picket, boycott, violence, 
murder, is justifiable to keep the union 
close, hardly requires discussion. The few who sup- 
port it on any basis of professed reasoning, assume that, 
as the state holds the property and even the life of the 
citizen subject to sacrifice for the greatest good of the 
greatest number, the trade has the same moral right 
over each of its members. The alleged justification — 
offered in various forms — for these attempted infringe- 
ments on liberty, is the greatest good of the greatest 
number, but at best that can only mean of "the greatest 
number" in the trade in question; and their good is 
avowedly sought through price? enhanced at the ex- 
pense of the greatest number of the community (258 a). 
Here should be most carefully and thoroughly realized, 
what was briefly touched upon before: first, that the 
principle of "the greatest good of the greatest number" 
can be applied only to actually "the greatest number '* — ■ 
the whole community — which the greatest number of a 
minor section can never be; and, second, that the ascer- 
tainment and securing of what is the greatest good of 
the greatest number, tho it has taxed all the wisdom 
of all the ages, has even yet been only approximately 
attained; and that so far as it has been attained, it is 
exjjressed in the exivSting body of laws made by all for all. 

252. Aimed against So much for the principles involved. Now 

laborer, empioyer, , xjx-i/tvj 

and pubiic. to come to details. Irade-union coercion 

is threefold: It is directed primarily against the enter- 
priser, through strikes and boycotts; but secondarily 
against the laborer, to prevent his giving the benefit of 
competition to the enterpriser, or incidentally to himself 
when he happens to be unemployed: the union wants 
nobody competing with it, and therefore tries coercion 
to get all men to belong to it, and to stand idle when 
it is idle. And third, the coercion is directed against 
the public — to compel public opinion to endorse labor's 
contentions, by stopping transit, coal supplies, food 
supplies, and other necessities and conveniences. 



248 The Protection of Rights. [§253 

253. Coercing the ^^ "^0 coercing the employer: the time 
employer. during which the laborer can stand idle 

without a loss that is serious or fatal, is much shorter 
xhan the time during which the enterpriser can — the 
laborer cannot afford to wait for a good bargain, while 
the enterpriser can. The union therefore tries to in- 
crease the laborer's ability to wait, and to diminish the 
employer's ability to wait. This is often done by 
making the settlement of a difference depend not on 
the employer doing without the laborer with whom he 
differs, but doing without any laborers at all. 

Now there can be no objection to any peaceable 
efforts necessary to secure to labor the full benefit 
of the natural demand for labor. They become ob- 
jectionable only when they deprive the employer of 
the full benefit of the natural supply. If a laborer 
thinks that demand for labor justifies higher wages, 
it is perfectly legitimate to test the question by leaving 
the work, and seeing if the place can be filled at the 
price. But when the test is attempted 

' ® ""' ^' by all the men stopping work together, it 
is not made by the natural flow of supply and demand : 
the natural flow would be for each man to take work 
elsewhere, when tempted by a natural demand in the 
shape of higher wages elsewhere. This would not in- 
volve stoppage of the business : the question could thus 
be tested without shock or material loss on either side. 

But there are obstacles to this ideal test, obstacles 
often so great as a change of the laborer's residence. 
These obstacles would prevent his getting higher wages 
elsewhere, unless the wages were enough higher to 
justify the expense and inconvenience of whatever 
change might be involved. This expense and incon- 
venience may readily be greater than would be involved 
in a strike, and the laborer's rights might be better 
conserved by v/aiting until enough men were discon- 
tented to unite in a strike. But not only is the strike 
against whatever rights the employer may have to get 
the question of higher wages settled gradually without 
stopping his works, but strikes are in many instances, 



§ 255] Personal Property. 249 

perhaps in most, forced by a minority, or undertaken 
by men who are not discontented, but who only act 
in sympathy with a strike elsewhere. 

Conversely, the employer cannot be expected to carry 
on work at prices that are not profitable, and an entire 
stoppage of the works may be as much to his interest 
sometimes, as at other times a strike may be to the 
interest of the men. But ordinarily it would be in the 
course of nature for him to try to reach a lov/er scale 
of wages gradually, rather than proceed to a lockout, 
and both incur idleness himself, and deprive his men 
of their means of subsistence. 

Thus in both directions, the rights of master and 
man often conflict. Men with reason and morals can 
generally settle their conflicts by discussion and com- 
promise, but beasts can settle them only by war; war, 
however, is justifiable only as a last resort, and strikes 
and lockouts are war. 

Lockouts, hov/ever, play but a small part in indus- 
trial troubles. The U. S. Bulletin of Labor for Sep- 
tember, 1904, shows that from 1881 to 1900 inclusive, 
there were over twenty times as many strikes as lock- 
outs, and the employers lost over five times as much 
by strikes as by lockouts. In the five years 1 896-1 900, 
the strikes increased to over thirty to one lockout; 
and the ratio of loss increased three and a half fold; 
tho if the years 189 5-1 899 were taken, it would show 
a fall in strikes to about fifteen to one lockout. In 
view of the facts, then, we may reasonably continue to 
confine our consideration to strikes. 

In all the coercion, the justice of the case has been 
obscured by many things — most perhaps by what seem 
to be the plain facts that a man has a right to stop 
work when he pleases, and to buy or not buy where 
he pleases; and that what one man has a right to do, 
any number have a right to do together. 
255. Conspiring to But in all strikes and boycotts there is 
stop work. more than the exercise of the mere right 

to stop work or stop buying. What leads to all the 
outrages is conspiring to stop work or stop buying. 



250 The Protection of Rights. [§ ^55 

Even granting to the individual the fullest right to 
do either, there still remains serious question of his 
right to enter into conspiracy with other men to do it 
together, when they unduly prejudice the rights of 
others — when, for instance, not to speak again of private 
wrongs, they bring an industry — especially a public 
utility, to a sudden and disastrous standstill. 

Moreover, even leaving out the many cases when the 
men are ordered out against the real wish of the majority, 
or because some other men have struck, and considering 
only the cases where men strike because they really 
want to, does each man stop w^ork when he pleases, or 
do the discontented stay at work after they have 
become discontented, in order that all may quit work 
together, to the greater inconvenience of the employer? 
Such a course is admittedly a conspiracy to injure the 
employer, and the right to take it is seriously questioned, 
even by the law. Similarly, of course, with the boycott 
coercion. 

256. Other coer- Beginning with occasional and often 
cions, entirely justifiable demands for higher 

wages and shorter hours, the unions have gradually 
added limitation of apprentices; limitation of a ca- 
pable man's output to that of an incapable man; re- 
fusal to handle material from previous non-union pro- 
ducers, or material coming from other shops, or mate- 
rial not prepared in their own city, before they have 
duplicated it and destroyed the duplicate; and hosts 
of other regulations of their employers' business. The 
employers have yielded point by point until the de- 
mands have reached the logical conclusion of that 
for the "closed shop" — closed to all but union men, 
and that the foreman shall be a union man chosen 
by the men, instead of by the man who pays his wages. 

In 1906 the Typothetag of New York thus stated a 
situation that is by no means restricted to their trade: 

"The eraployer cannot put his own son to work at the 
machinery in his own composing-room until that son, after four 
years' probation, swears allegiance to the union, subscribing to 
an oath that puts obedience to the union above his duty to 



§ 257] Personal Property. 251 

family, church or state. The employer cannot hire or dis- 
charge his own men; they must be hired or discharged by a 
foreman, who must himself be a member of the union. An 
employer cannot operate the keyboard of a machine that he 
has paid for, or set his own type; he is not allowed any repre- 
sentation in his own composing-room. The composing-room 
is controlled by a union foreman, assisted by a union chair- 
man elected by union men, the chairman's duty being to 
see that neither the men nor the foreman shall for one moment 
forget any of the numerous restrictions which the union has 
placed on the running of the shop." 

In the last analysis, the object of the unions has been 
to break down the laws protecting private property — 
factories, stores, mines, transportation agencies, in 
order that they, instead of its owners, may control 
it and derive from it what revenue they please. This, 
it need hardly be pointed out, is one of the forms of 
confiscation grouped under the general term Socialism. 
Even if they were to succeed in their contention, noth- 
ing can be more certain than that, if the property 
were without the guidance of the superior minds which 
created it, the returns from it would fall off, and the 
revenues to the workman would diminish, and in 
many cas^s — in all, if the principle were carried out 
to its logical conclusion — would cease altogether. 

At this point, the employers have decided to resume 
control of their own businesses, and to run the "open 
shop" — shops open to whom they please to engage, on 
terms satisfactory to their own side as well as the 
other — and the parties are in the midst of a disastrous 
conflict. There can be but one end to such a conflict. 
Some weak employers in the printing trade have yielded 
for the moment, because they could not afford to stop 
work; but the strong ones are holding out simply 
because they must. The question is simply whether 
they shall control their businesses or give them up. 
The laborers cannot afford to have them given up. 
„.^ ... , ., Most of the discussion of strikes in the 

statistics of later literature of the subject, of course 

^*'''^^^' ends with the census of 1900. Based on 

the facts up to that time, Professor Adams says: 



252 The Protection of Rights. [§257 

"In the Final Report of the Industrial Commission (page 864) 
it is pointed out that although on the average of the twenty 
years 1881-1900, about 330,000 persons were thrown out of 
employment annually by strikes and lockouts, this number 
constituted only about 3.36 per cent, of the persons employed in 
industries affected by strikes. The actual time lost by strikers 
in this period amounted to about 194,000,000 days. However, 
'spread over the whole period, this loss amounts to very much 
less than one day per year for each adult worker. In other 
words, the workmen of the United States have lost less time 
from strikes and lockouts than from the celebration of the 
Fourth of July or any other legal holiday. . . .' Similarly, on 
the basis of the figures of the Department of Labor, Mr. Mitchell 
calculates that the immediate loss traceable to strikes amounts 
to only about 3 cents per month for each inhabitant." 

Now the madness that ruled the unionist world from 
1900, the last year considered in the foregoing para- 
graph, to 1906, when these words are written, would 
make that paragraph,* if applied to the more recent 

* Prof essor Adams deduces from a table of strikes from 1 881 to 
1900 some conclusions that are strange to find in a book usually 
as reliable as his. One is that unionism has tended to lessen the 
number of strikes. In support of this he deduces the fact that 
in '86-'9o there were 4358 union strikes, while in '96 to 1900 
there were but 4175. But I find that the same table shows that 
in '8i-'9o there were 5669 strikes, which in '91-1900 rose to 
8,788, and even that his five years '86-'9o, containing 4,358 
union strikes, were followed by five years, '9i-'95, containing 
4,613. 

Moreover, in the two periods he selects, he compares the 
non-union strikes with the union strikes, with the showing 
that the union strikes decreased four per cent., while the non- 
union strikes increased ten per cent. But if he had taken the 
two decades that I have taken from the same table, these 
figures would have been that union strikes had increased fifty- 
four per cent, (instead of diminishing two per cent.), while non- 
union ones had increased but thirty-five per cent. Since 1900, 
the statistics are not available, but no observer can doubt that 
the facts have been even vastly more in the direction that 
my comparison of the two decades shows, or that the unions 
have fomented strikes to a degree that seems to mean nothing 
short of the madness of those whom the gods wish to destroy. 

Of course it is not to be supposed that Professor Adams 
deliberately selected fractions of each decade which happened 
to support his theory, and yet a glance at his table reveals the 
showing of the whole twenty years to be startlingly counter to 
that of the two periods he has selected. 



§ 253] Personal Property. 253 

period, the wildest nonsense — a fact which it is impor- 
tant for writers to point out as long as current facts 
and previous facts continue in such direct contra- 
diction — probably until the census of 19 10 shows the 
conditions of the last six years, and, it is to be hoped, 
the subsidence of them. Favorable symptoms of the 
subsidence are the rise of the employers' unions and 
citizens' industrial unions, a great decrease of strikes 
since 1903, and the falling off, in 1904, of the member- 
ship of the trade-unions, which is not yet made up, 
despite the subsequent full employment and high 
wages. 

258. Coercing the ^s to coercing the laborer : there is no 
^^^om. question that the trade-union would be 

more efficient as a monoply, and that it has a right to 
persuade men to make it a monopoly. But equally is 
there no question that it has no right to add violence 
or intimidation to persuasion, or that the unions have 
at last become so used to artificially limiting the supply 
of labor, have become such adepts in it, and have de- 
rived such advantages from it (tho largely illusive ones), 
that they have got in the way of doing it under un- 
justifiable circumstances, and by unjustifiable means. 

Among the means, as already said, is the use of 
coercion to limit the number of apprentices. Such a 
policy, even among shipwrecked sailors struggling for 
a raft too small to hold them all, is not easily 
regarded with patience, and when it is persistently pur- 
sued by men already supplied with the necessities of 
life and not a few of its luxuries, its cruelty and selfish- 
ness are beyond excuse. Its absurdity is often on a 
par with them: for instance, in several trade-unions — 
notably in the typographical ones, it has now got to 
the point where a father cannot teach his trade to 
his son in his own shop, without the consent of the 
union ; and it need hardly be pointed out that if limita- 
tions were practiced by all trades, more of the com- 
munity would be reduced to the position of labor too 
unskilled to be organized — of that pitiable residuum 



2 54 The Protection of Rights. [§258 

**the unemployed", which is drawn upon only when 
nothing better can be had. 

On the other hand, some trades, as in the printers' 
strike of 1905-6, have forced employers to teach the 
trade to so many outsiders, that many of the strikers 
themselves, on wanting work after the strike has failed, 
find their trade overcrowded. 

Appreciating the value of unity of action, whether 
the cause be right or wrong, the unions have stopped 
at no crime in the effort to secure it. Not content 
with the savagery of pushing apprentices off the raft, 
the unions are given to boycott, violence and murder, 
to coerce men to stop work against their will; and 
all these steps are habitual in quarrels not their own; 
and in strikes entered upon when the employers have 
done no wrong. The Chicago Tribune claims to have 
statistics showing that in the United States from 1894 
to 1904 inclusive, there were three times as many 
murders committed in riots to coerce laborers, as in all 
other riots put together. 

The unions have set no limits to the ends they hope 
to attain by coercion of laborers. Reason and justice 
require that, other things even, the lowest bidder should 
258 (a). The obtain work. The unions wish to elimi- 
Labor Trust. natc all bidding among laborers. They 

have made the euphemism of "collective bargaining", 
and claimed a mass of virtues for it — correctly claimed, 
if their own side alone is to be considered. But no 
human ingenuity can extract from the phrase or the 
idea, anything but an absolutely close labor "trust": 
that is precisely what all trusts are made for — collective 
bargaining — eliminating individual competition. This 
is not saying, however, that trusts — whether labor 
trusts or capital trusts, necessarily merit condemnation; 
but it is characteristic of the low intelligence which 
must accompany low productive power, to exalt the 
labor trust while condemning the capital trust. 

Each labor union is trying to form a trust controlling 
its branch of labor, and the American Federation of 
Labor is a trust trying to include them all. To deny 



§ 259] Personal Property. 255 

this would be so absurd that many of the members 
frankly confess it; and while other trusts have the 
decency at least to profess to lower ■prices, the members 
of the labor trusts all confess, at least indirectly, 
that their object is to advance prices. Few if any of 
them have the intelligence to realize that all labor 
trusts but each man's own, are advancing prices against 
him, and that even his own advances the price of such 
of its commodities as he uses. As so often said already: 
they do not think as far as their outgo, but only as 
far as their income. Their ideal "collective bargain- 
ing" is that there shall be but one bargainer on their 
side, and that the laborer shall be taken at his price 
or not at all, even if babes go without milk, and the 
whole community without meat and coal. While the 
unionists cry out most bitterly because the capital 
trust is only "one bargainer", while they are the most 
bitter denouncers of the capital trusts' destruction of 
competition in things which unionists realize that they 
themselves use, they are ready to override everything 
to destroy competition in labor. While they denounce 
the Standard Oil Company and the American Steel 
Company for absorbing outsiders through business com- 
petition, they themselves habitually try to absorb out- 
siders by the bludgeon. 

In trying to limit the right to work and to contract — 
the right of demand to seek supply, and of supply to 
seek demand, in a free country, they are attempting an 
impossibility — without freedom to work, freedom to 
contract, and freedom to compete, no country can be 
free: the condition of the workman must be simply 
that of the slave, and the slave of the worst tyrant 
known — a wrong-headed majority. 

2cg p . As to Coercing the Public, everybody 

the "nubiic knows illustrations enough, but some will 

The union label. ^^^^ ^^ ^ clearer understanding of the 

rights of the situation. 

A scheme of the labor trust has been to coerce the 
public from buying any goods not bearing the union 



256 The Protection of Rights. [§259 

label. It has tried the scheme in many ways calling 
for the same charity that we give to children when 
they do things whose enormity they do not realize. 
One is the ingenuous step of demanding legislation 
to enforce the scheme, — a step which no capital trust 
would be either so bold or so innocent as to attempt. 
Perhaps it was a step more ingenu.ous still, when a 
labor trust began interfering with education by noti- 
fying publishers that union influence would be used 
to drive out of the Boston schools any books that did 
not bear the union label. The tendency of such a 
policy is of course to lead people of independent spirit, 
wherever possible, to avoid using goods with the union 
label. I have even known a case where a person 
who responds with considerable freedom to circulars 
asking for aid for deserving charities, has ceased pay- 
ing attention to those which bear the union label. To 
an obvious criticism, he responded that, whatever 
those bearing the union label might deserve, there 
were enough not bearing it, to justify concentrating 
on them all the money he could give. 

And yet with all the. claims for the union label, the 
highest New York court in 1906 would not sanction a 
requirement of it in the contract for the public printing 
of Onondaga County, pronounced the requirement 
"against public policy and unlawful", and said that 
"the Board with just as much propriety, so far as its 
legal right is concerned, might have permitted only 
Baptist or Unitarian printers to enter the bidding list". 
The decision is very full in citation of supporting cases. 

The following paragraphs from the New York Times 
of May 12, 1906, may cast some farther light on the 
alleged right to coerce the public into endorsing a 
labor contention, by stopping work: 

"When the strike of the Funeral-Drivers' Union 
nUistration*^°" S°^ under way yesterday, New York witnessed 

such scenes as the city never before saw. 
" Several funerals were abandoned by strikers when the dead 
were between the church and the grave. 



§ 2 6o] Personal Property. 257 

"Of 103 funerals that had been set for yesterday in the city 
only 23 were finished. The carriages of some of those were 
stoned by the strikers or their sympathizers. 

" Farrell's funeral was set for one o'clock. Several carriages 
and a hearse had been drawn up to the door, when a walking dele- 
gate from the union ordered the drivers to go back to the livery 
stable. They went back. Th.n came the news that the livery- 
stable owner had ten other funerals, and had been obliged 
to sign the agreement. The carriages returned to the house of 
mourning, but came back with flying colors. On the heads of 
the hearse-horses were two red, white and blue flags, and on 
the bridles of each of the carriage-horses tiny flags signified a 
victory for the funeral-drivers. The mourners protested, de- 
claring that the funeral procession with the flags would look 
like a west-side chowder club. But with the union's flags 
flying at the heads of the hearse- and coach-horses the funeral 
went on to the cemetery." 

In another case "The Rev. Father John C. Henry. . .was 
delivering a eulogy on the dead man when there was a com- 
motion at the church door. ... A committee from the striking 
union had called the driver of the hearse and ordered him to take 
his hearse back. . , . The coach-drivers were ordered back, too. 
Leaving the body and the mourners in the church, the hearse- 
driver and the coach-drivers drove away. The sexton . . . went 
about notifying the mourners of the situation and telling them 
to remain in their pews until matters could be straightened 
out. . . .The police reserves from two precincts were sent to 
see that the strikers did not again interfere with the funeral. 
Then Undertaker Hagan hitched one of Undertaker Slevin's 
horses to an undertaker's wagon, and returning placed the 
body in the wagon. The immediate relatives of the dead 
man accepted the offer of a private carriage that had taken a 
party to the funeral, and then followed the body to Calvary 
Cemetery. The rest of the mourners went to the cemetery 
in trolley cars, after this funeral had been held up for two 
hours. 

"In another case, up in the Bronx, the body was put in a 
milk-wagon and driven to the cemetery, while the mourners 
rode in surreys and grocery wagons." 

In another case 'A large number of the striking funeral 
drivers assembled opposite the Ogle home at 8 o'clock. The 
police reserves were sent for, and drove the strikers away. 
. . . Four men appeared carrying the coffin on their shoulders 
and followed by the mourners, who walked. 

' ' Dr. Guilfoyle granted an extension of the burial permit in 
the Weaver case, so that the body could be held at the house 
until to-day. The law forbids the holding of a body more 
than four days. . . . The Weaver family, like others in mourning 
for their dead, were compelled to sit up another night with 
their dead relative. 



258 The Protection of Rights. [§260 

' ' The funeral of Antonio Le Grabier . , . was headed off by 
a committee of strikers, who ordered the hearse-driver and 
the coach-drivers to leave their seats. They pulled up, leaving 
the coaches and hearse in the roadway. ..." 

In another case ' ' Striking drivers ran out and tried to drag 
Undertaker Lumoro from his seat on the hearse. Policeman 
Gleason, one of the guards, ran at the strikers with his club and 
drove them away. The funeral then proceeded, . . . but still 
followed by the mob of striking funeral drivers and their 
friends. 

"At the ferry the mob threw sticks and stones at the hearse 
and coaches. The mourners climbed out of the carriages and 
took refuge in the ferry-house. 

"A man asked Dr. Guilfoyle to hold the body of his child for 
another day. He said the child had died of measles, and that 
the undertaker told him the body would have to be taken to 
the cemetery in an express wagon. 

" 'My wife is very ill', he said, 'and she vows she will not 
permit anyone to place our child in an express wagon. If I 
can get a permit to hold the body for twenty-four hours more, 
it will be the means of probably saving the life of my sick wife.' 

"Dr. Guilfoyle granted the permit. 

"It was said at the Health Department that if an attempt 
is made to-day to hold up funerals the police will be called on 
to make arrests under Sections 314 and 315 of the Penal Code. 
Section 314 provides that any person who detains a dead human 
body on any demand is guilty of a misdemeanor. Section 315 
says : 

" 'A person who, with or without authority of law, obstructs 
or detains any person engaged in carrying or accompanying 
the dead body of a human being to a place of burial is guilty 
of a misdemeanor.' . . . 

"Dr. Guilfoyle said the strikers yesterday had held up the 
funeral of a person who died from diphtheria. This was a 
serious matter, he said, as the body had been held over the 
twenty-four-hour limit without the Health Department's per- 
mission." 

The right to stop work! Has anybody 

261. The right to g^ right to anything which will lead to such 

barbarities as these, or such as may be read 

of in connection with a large proportion of all 

strikes ? 

Undoubtedly, other things even, any man has a right 
to quit work when he pleases. But plainly there are 
cases where other things are not even. I cannot treat 
this important subject better than I have done else- 



§ 262] Personal Property, 259 

where,* and I will therefore use again the passages 
with slight modifications. 

In any contract for work, even if terminable without 
notice, certain things which it is superfluous to express 
in the contract, are always understood. One of those 
things is that neither party shall wilfully use the relation 
between the two, to the damage of the other, or of any- 
body else. Nobody would say that a workman whose 
business it is to connect water- or gas-pipes has a 
right to quit work the moment he has tapped a main, 
without making his connection or stopping the leak; 
nobody would claim that a surgeon has the right to 
stop work after he has cut a man's leg off, before stop- 
ping the blood and putting the stump in order ; nobody 
would claim, indeed, that an actor, having gathered 
his audience together, has a right to stop in the middle 
of the play, even if he returns half the entrance-money. 
. . . No fair-minded person can fail to see that railway 
employees have no right to quit work while trains of 
passengers, animals, or perishable freight are likely to 
be delayed ; and as the welfare of the whole community 
depends not only upon trains being carried to their 
destination, but upon their being regularly run at their 
usual intervals, it also follows from the same considera- 
tions, that no railway employee has a right to quit 
work under any ordinary circumstances without giving 
notice reasonably sufficient for the procuring of a sub- 
stitute if one can be had, or for making some reasonable 
arrangement if one cannot. And in all cases, the 
laborer's right to stop work is limited by the rights of 
others to have their interests put in safe or reasonably 
complete condition before the laborer leaves them. 

262. The com- The parties to this question are no longer 

munity's defence, merely the employer, the striker, and the 
possible man glad "to take his job, but there is a fourth 
man who is of vastly more importance and power than 
any of them, and who, as soon as he becomes fully 

* " Sturmsee ", third edition, pp. 409-12. 



2 6o The Protection of Rights. [§262 

alive to his rights, is going to settle them in a way 
that will brook no cavil or resistance. This fourth man 
is the average citizen — agglomerated as the community 
at large. In the United States, he represents to-day 
over forty million adults (including his v/ife) and over 
eighty million people, including his children, whose 
milk supply (not to speak of the family food and fuel, 
and his convenience of passing between house and 
business) has been held up a little too often by the 
mere convenience or whim of some two million persons 
belonging to the trade-unions. If his rights had been 
violated because of the necessities of these people, 
or of crying injustice inflicted upon them, he would 
have felt sympathy and patience. But they have been 
too often held up, not by men quitting old jobs and 
seeking new ones, as discontent and opportunity arose, 
but by conspiracies, for poor reasons, to stop work and 
make others stop work, together. 

There has been a principle upheld among Anglo- 
Saxon people for a good many hundred years, tho 
suffered to lapse into occasional desuetude, that men 
conspiring to do a thing unobjectionable if they do 
it separately, but working harm to the rights of an- 
other or of the community if they do it together, are 
guilty of a criminal act ; and the community is rapidly 
being forced into a disposition to visit on such crim- 
inal acts, their proper penalties. The work has begun 
already. 
„^^ p , , The a8:2:ressions at last have forced 

263. Society ^ . ^9^ . - 4.1, _^ 

organizing combinations not only among the em- 

in self-defence. ployers, but among new forces that are 

irresistible — those of the community in general. Few 

labor unions can see beyond their own ranks; they 

forget that their exactions must be met not merely 

by their employers, but by all who use the product, 

including even members of other unions. 

In 1901 the first Employers' Association was formed 

in Dayton, Ohio. Before that time employers had 

quite generally sought to profit by each other's troubles, 

instead of uniting against all unjustifiable trouble. 



§ 263] Personal Property. 261 

In 1901, an Employers' Association was organized in 
Chicago, and many other cities soon followed suit. 

About the same time street-car operatives had been 
making serious trouble in Montana, and miners doing 
the same in Colorado, Remembering the Vigilance 
Committee of San Francisco, the people organized 
similarly, many workmen, even, being on the side of 
law and order. Nearly four hundred of these associa- 
tions have grown up and are now combined in the 
National Citizens' Industrial Association "for the pro- 
tection of the common people", which publishes a 
valuable organ, "The Square Deal". It includes the 
National Association of Manufacturers, comprising some 
three thousand firms and corporations, whose organ is 
' ' American Industries ' ' ; and also the powerful ' ' Anti- 
Boycott Association". Thus the intelligence, capital, 
and rights of citizenship of the country are at last 
arrayed against the excesses of the unions, and by or- 
ganized appeal to the law, have obtained important 
decisions against them ; * have prevented much class 
legislation; and are disseminating valuable education. 

The National Association of Manufacturers has estab- 
lished free employment bureaus to give independent 
laborers work which strikers have refused. f The 

* " In three fourths of the Chicago strikes, injunctions have 
been secured restraining strikers from interfering with non-union 
men, on the ground that it was a conspiracy to prevent work. 
Hence the anti-injunction bill which the American Federation 
of Labor has tried hard to put through Congress. This bill, in 
the opinion of Mr. James M. Beck, chief counsel of the American 
Anti-Boycott Association, ' legalized conspiracies ' between 
unions, but made it impossible to enjoin them." (From an 
article in the Chicago "World of To-Day" by Mr. Isaac F, 
Marcosson) 

t "Nearly every strike ending in a victory for the open shop has 
been followed by the establishment of a labor bureau. The union 
men call it a black-list agency, because it keeps a check on a man's 
record. The National Metal Trades Association furnishes a good 
example. It runs open shops. Any man of good character want- 
ing a job in the metal trades can apply there and in four out of five 
cases he secures work free of charge. The secretary investigates 
the man's record. All the facts about him are put on a card 
which is kept in a permanent card catalogue. In this way 



262 The Protection of Rights. [§ 263 

employers' organizations, in nine tenths of the cases 
which they have taken up, have estabhshed the open 
shop, where the unions have tried to destroy it. 
264. Educational Great as has been the immediate eco- 
Results. nomic value of all this experience, its 

educational value must be greater still. Both are indi- 
cated in the simple fact stated before, that while in 1903 
there were in Chicago 1,300 strikes, in 1904 there were 
but 800. Unless all strikes are wise and justifiable, it is 
reasonable to presume that the falling off in 1904 was 
in the class of those that would not have been so, while 
the number that did take place is apparently large 
enough to include virtually all that could have been 
wise and justifiable ; and more workmen are apparentty 
learning not to strike wantonly, while they still re- 
tain the spirit to maintain their rights. 

Thus the unionists may have lately begun to learn, 
that after all there is no more magic in coercion than 
there is in the other nostrums for getting much by 
the man who produces little; and they are learning 
it, as the uselessness of the other nostrums has had 
to be learned, at frightful cost to themselves and the 
community. 

If more of such teaching is needed, it may get so 
far that the twenty million men who are not in the 
habit of striking, may outvote the two million who 

the disturbers are kept out of the shops. Last year the Chicago 
labor bureau of the metal trades had 4,850 applicants and 
3,000 men got jobs. 

"Bureaus in different cities kept in touch with one another. 
If a man applying in Kansas City lies about the reason why 
he left a job there, he is sure to be found out if he applies in 
New York. If a strike is threatened, for instance in the New 
York metal trades, a central secretary can send a telegram to 
every labor-bureau secretary, asking him to rush men to New 
York. In twenty-four hours a hundred boiler-makers would 
be on their way from Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincin- 
nati, Philadelphia and a dozen other places. 

"These bureaus have made leaders cautious about calling 
men out. Formerly they called a strike and then considered 
the grievance. Now they consider the grievance first." {Mar- 
cosson, op. cit.) 



§2640^] Personal Property. 263 

are. All strikes have been declared criminal by statute 
before now. Even in Australasia, "the Paradise of 
Labor", the mere attempt to foment one is subject 
to heavy penalties (291), and if the proportion of them 
which unquestionably are criminal even under our law, 
should again increase as rapidly as they were increasing 
before people began the checks just described, all 
strikes may be declared criminal again, and strikers 
reduced to depend only on verdicts of not guilty where 
the strike is justifiable, just as such verdicts are found 
in the rare cases where killing a human being is justifiable. 
Probably the workingman would be 
munity's defence the gainer if they were. In the modern 
will defend the world, the undisturbcd laws of competition 
wor man. would probably take better care of him, 

than, in his recent mad attempts to overcome those 
laws, and in his subservience to his walking delegates 
and Sam Parkses, he has succeeded in taking of himself. 
But probably he will not drive society to any such ex- 
treme. Other agencies are opposing his errors, and he 
is coming to recognize them and, it is to be hoped, to 
be the gainer in consequence. 

If the justifiability of such strikes as those of the 
last few years had had to be passed upon by judges 
and juries, few of the hurtful strikes would have been 
undertaken, while the laborers would still have felt 
free to enter upon those deserving of public sympathy, 
and therefore likely to be of real use. If all unionists ap- 
preciated as well as those of Australasia seem to (278a), 
the advantages sure to accrue to them from such legal 
regulation of strikes as would prevent the unjust and 
foolish ones — especially those incited for mere leaders' 
graft, the unionists would be the first to agitate for 
the growing improvements in the law. 

The demagogues and corruptionists in the unions 
oppose arbitration agreements and all other means of 
avoiding strikes. On the other hand, nearly all the 
good and wise leaders, and there are many of them, 
do all they can to avoid strikes, as suicidal. Many 
honest but stupid men look upon the union as nothing 



264 The Protection of Rights. [§264(3 

but a machine to strike with, while the fact is that 
some of the most successful unions, whose men actually 
receive far more than the average amount of wages, 
have seldom struck at all. Considering how the unions 
have lost wages and membership during the recent 
saturnalia of strikes, it is not unthinkable that unless 
the strikes disappear, the unions must. If they stick 
to their legitimate function — like that of the German 
army for the last thirty-five years — of powerful pro- 
moters of peace, letting all who would impose on the 
workingman know that they have not to deal with 
individuals, but with an army, not much imposition 
need be feared. They have rushed into their excesses 
because they had only individual employers and unpre- 
pared communities to impose upon. Now that the 
employers and the communities have begun to marshal 
their forces, the unions will soon find unjust aggression 
hopeless, but will receive all the more sympathy when 
their complaints are just. 



CHAPTER XXL 

PERSONAL PROPERTY (CONTINUED). 

Schemes for Distributing it more Evenly {Continued). 

(IV) Labor and the Law. 

I will now attempt to give some idea of the general 
attitude of the law regarding labor conspiracy and 
coercion. 

Of the laws enacted by legislatures and 
an^l'CivfcYawI"^^ pronounced by judges and by priests, such 
as work, are only statements of natural 
laws; and anybody trying to reform society by some 
fanciful scheme counter to natural law, will soon find 
him.self in opposition to some law of the state rooted 
deep in human experience. The trade-unions are 
already in pronounced opposition to the laws of both 
Nature and the State, as is shown not only by individual 
violations of the law, but in the general attitude of 
the unions. To carry out their systems, they have 
found it necessary to exact from their members a 
pledge of fealty to the union superior to their fealty to 
church and state, to prohibit them from entering the 
militia which protects the established law, and to 
agitate for the abrogation of injunction, which is one 
of the most important features of the established law; 
they have procured the enactment of many impossible 
statutes, which are of course falling to pieces under the 
scrutiny of the courts; and they frequently publicly 
admit that they hold themselves superior to the law, 

265 



2 66 The Protection of Rights. [§265 

and that they cannot succeed without going beyond it. 
After President Roosevelt told the unionists at Chicago 
in 1905 that there would be no discrimination in favor 
of either side, the President of the Chicago Federation 
of Labor said: "The President deals a death-blow to 
organized labor . . without discrimination, we are just 
where we started. What we have been fighting for is 
union labor to the exclusion of all others." In other 
words, they had been fighting to override the laws pro- 
tecting the non-unionists' Right-to-Work, and every 
man's right to join the union or not at his free will. 
Their avowed and acted policy is that, if society will 
not see their most trivial demands granted, society 
shall suffer the most serious consequences. In short, 
just as the ignorant, seeking for shorter cuts to fortune 
than industry, frugality, inventiveness and the other 
effective sources of wealth, have lately tried, with con- 
spicuous failure, to set aside the natural laws which 
control land, money and industry, so they are now 
attacking not only the statute laws which they them- 
selves have approved, but the venerable system of Anglo- 
Saxon common law which has grown out of the experi- 
ence of the ages, and which is by many, and those proba- 
bly the wisest, regarded as the greatest achievement 
and most important possession of the human race. 
Probably existing laws are adequate to the situation, at 
least so far as the unions have not effected the repeal 
of the common law which has protected the liberties 
of English-speaking people since English was first 
spoken. Altho the common law has always been re- 
garded mainly as the defence of the poor against the 
rich, many people have been surprised to find in it equal 
elements of defence of the rich against the poor. An 
impression has become widespread that vox populi is 
not always vox dei, and that the voice of the trade- 
unionist IS not always even the voice of the people.* 

* An instance instructive in many ways, not least regarding 
the frequent boomerang effect of legislation, is afforded in this 
connection. No portion of the community was more active 
than the trades-unions in the agitation which led to the Sher- 



§ 20 5 ^] Personal Property. 267 

However, conspiracies of laborers to obstruct and even 
to destroy the business of employers who would not, and 
often could not, concede to their demands, have grown 
so frequent that, like the violence of primitive com- 
munities, they have come to be regarded as justifiable; 
and American legislatures have even passed statutes 
admitting a right to strike. But the courts are taking 
different ground, 

265 (a). The Law The legality of a number of men doing 
of Conspiracy. together what each may do separately, was 
treated by Justice Harlan, in the U. S. Supreme Court, 
Arthur vs. Oakes. He said: 

' 'An intent upon the part of a single person to injure the 
rights of others or of the public is not in itself a wrong of which 
the law will take cognizance, unless some injurious act be done 
in execution of the unlawful intent. But a combination of 
two or more persons with such an intent and under circum- 
stances that give them, when so combined, a power to do an 
injury they would not possess as individuals acting singly, has 
always been recognized as in itself wrongful and illegal." 

Nearer up to date, in 1906, the Pennsylvania court 
of first resort (whose judgment was confirmed by the 
higher court) in the Purvis Boycott case, said: 

"The defendants contend, however, that what they did in 
concert was simply what each might have done for himself, 
acting on his own initiative, and that their concerted action 
was not, therefore, unlawful. 

* 'I do not understand such to be the law of our state. There 



man Anti-Trust Act. This act makes criminal every com- 
bination in restraint of trade between the states. It was 
primarily aimed against abuses among the railroad companies 
and the great shippers. It has now been applied by the courts 
to boycotts and similar combinations interfering with the 
business of any establishment sending goods outside of its 
own state, and the mere notification of their criminality peace- 
fully resolved the teamsters' boycott against the Kellogg 
Switchboard Co. in Chicago, the freight-handlers' boycott against 
the meat-packers, and other boycotts in other places. The 
unions, dissatisfied with the laws they advocated for others, 
when applied to themselves, are now agitating for repeal. 



268 The Protection of Rights, [§ 265 a 

is, under some circumstances, a potency in numbers of which 
the law takes notice. ' Men often do [illegally] by the combina- 
tion of many, what severally no one could accomplish, and 
even what when done by one would be innocent. There is a 
potency in numbers when combined which the law cannot 
overlook when injury is the consequence. . . .' " Morris Run 
Coal Company vs. Barclay, 68 Pa. 173. 

Then was quoted a previous decision, in Patterson vs. 
Building Trades Council, 11 Dist. Rep. 500: 

" 'AH the authorities of this state go to show that while the 
act of an individual may not be unlawful, yet the same act 
when committed by a combination of two or more, may be 
unlawful, and therefore actionable.'" 

The court went on: 

" The authorities above cited indicate clearly that the doctrine 
of Bohn Manufacturing Co. vs. HoUis, 54 Minn. 223 and 40 
A. S. R. 319, that 'What one man may lawfully do singly, two 
or more may lawfully agree to do jointly', is not the doctrine 
of the law of our own state. Neither, indeed, does it seem to 
conform to elementary principles. The efforts of one, by rea- 
son of their very puniness, may be such that the law will take 
no notice of them : ' de minimis lex non curat.' But when, with 
increasing numbers, the individual effort has grown into an 
avalanche of power, can it still be said that the law will not 
notice it because the individual contributions thereto are 
small? With us the law takes notice of the cumulative power 
of increasing numbers . ' ' 

The same point was sustained by Judge Knowlton of 
Massachusetts when he said : 

" An act which can be done in legitimate competition by one, 
two or three persons, each proceeding independently, might 
take an entirely different character both in its nature and its 
purpose if done by hundreds in combination." 

Similar ground was taken regarding the whole ap- 
parently innocent class of rights which include stopping 
work at will; choosing one's shopmates; buying where 
one pleases ; peaceably arguing with another man regard- 
ing choice of places and times for working, buying and 
selling; etc., etc., when the United States Supreme 
Court said: 



§ 265 ^] Personal Property. 269 

" No conduct has such an absolute privilege as to justify- 
all possible schemes of which it may be a part. The most inno- 
cent and constitutionally protected of acts or omissions may be 
made a step in a criminal plot, and if it is a step in a plot, neither 
its innocence nor the Constitution is sufficient to prevent the 
punishment of the plot by law." 

The general principle was thus illustrated by Hon. 
Daniel Davenport, Counsel to the Anti-Boycott League, 
in an address before the Citizens' Industrial Association 
of America, in 1905: 

' ' Suppose half a dozen men in my town are bakers ; I go to 
one of them. . . . He may say to me: 'You do not belong to 
my church, or you do not belong to any church. ... I do not 
want to sell you any bread unless you join the church.' He 
has a perfect right to do that. And so, if I go to each of the 
other five, every one of them has a right to say that he will 
refuse to sell to me ; but if those six men have combined together 
and agreed not to sell me bread, in order to make me do some- 
thing, for instance, to make me join the church, that is a con- 
spiracy, and every act they do to carry out that conspiracy is 
unlawful, by reason of the fact of its being a step in the plot. 

' ' That principle has been laid down by the Supreme Court of 
the United States in a case that arose in the State of Wisconsin. 
It has been emphatically laid down by the courts of Illinois, and 
it has, within a few days, in cases that we have been connected 
with in the State of Massachusetts, been recognized and applied." 

Other decisions to the same general effect are too 
numerous and too various to recount. Occasionally 
some demagogic judge who cares more for Labor than 
for Law, or some petty magistrate who does not know 
the law, turns up with a decision in the opposite di- 
rection, but the weight of the law is now past question. 
The bearing of these decisions on the right to strike 
is obvious — that men have no right to attack another 
man's property or business because they once helped 
in it, and threw up their jobs because they and 
their employer could not agree; and that conspiracies 
to strike, picket and boycott are such attacks. 
265 (b). The A Strike is questionable also on the second 

"Cornel-" again, ground that it is an artificial damming up 
of the supply of labor: so it is open to the same objec- 
tion with an artificial cornering of goods. 



270 The Protection of Rights. [§ 265 6 

For these considerations, the common law — the de- 
cisions of judges have not seldom been against there 
being any such thing as a right to strike. The Eng- 
lish courts, whose example has largely influenced 
ours, have held from time immemorial that it was 
criminal conspiracy for workmen to unite to raise 
wages and shorten hours, and Parliament has passed 
statutes to the same effect. These acts were repealed 
in 1824, and later there have been statutes declaring 
that no combined action could be criminal in a trade 
dispute unless it were criminal when committed by an 
individual. But there is a growing sense that this is 
going too far. As already shown, there are many de- 
cisions of courts, English as well as American, that acts 
which can work no injustice when performed by an 
individual, may work great injustice when performed 
by many men at once. 

265 (c). Malicious A long-cstablished principle is that 
intent. strikcs are criminal if undertaken with 

malicious intent. The range of malicious intent, how- 
ever, is not yet very thoroughly defined. It seems to 
have been sufficiently determined whether there is an 
element of malicious intent in holding up the transit 
of food or fuel of the whole community in order to 
secure some relatively minor convenience or concession 
for a few. 

26b (d). Labor- In Massachusctts, strikes are illegal 

saving machinery, when directed against labor-saving ma- 
chinery. In 1895 the Supreme Court issued an in- 
junction against the masons building the Harvard 
Medical School, stopping work because the contractors 
were using labor-saving machinery to form the arches. 
Labor-saving machinery is so clearly demanded by the 
greatest good of the greatest number, or " public policy ", 
that it is strange that this act of the judges should be 
regarded as something of a novelty. 

265 (e). The open Strikes are illegal when directed against 
^'^'^P' the open shop. In the Chicago Typothetse 

Case, in 1905, the injunction prohibited "from attempt- 
ing to prevent by threats of injury or by threats of 



§ 26$h] Personal Property. 271 

calling strikes, any persons from accepting work from 
or doing work for such complainants." And there are 
hosts of decisions to the same effect. 
265//;. "immedi- Many of the judges who admit the right 
Thl 'sympathetic^ to Strike, limit it by an important pro- 
strihe. vision — that legally to conspire to strike, a 

man must have an "immediate interest" in the object 
struck for. It is widely held that a man has enough 
immediate interest in increased wages or decreased 
hours to justify his conspiring to strike for them, but 
it is also widely held that in a strike to compel the dis- 
charge of a non-union man, or the reinstatement of a 
union man, the strikers have no such " immediate in- 
terest" as to prevent the strike being an illegal con- 
spiracy. For the same reasons, sympathetic strikes are 
now quite generally held to be illegal conspiracies, a 
man having no such "interest" in another establish- 
ment or another trade working beside him — on a build- 
ing for instance, not to speak of a trade in another 
part of the country, as to justify his striking because 
the others have struck. 

265 (g). Prof. The following additional causes enumer- 

Adams' summary, ^tcd by Profcssor Adams render strikers 
liable to criminal indictment: 

" Hindrance and delay of the United States mail, persuasion 
of others to obstruct the mails or interstate commerce generally, 
inducement or coercion of one person to boycott another, the 
coercion of the public generally to adopt certain measures, and 
probably the violation of labor contracts. It need hardly be 
said that in most of these cases the combiners hope to benefit 
themselves ultimately. But if, in the chain of intermediate 
means, there is an illegal act such as intimidation of a 'scab', or 
if the ultimate benefit is remote, trivial or indefinite, while 
the injury is the immediate object sought, the combination 
becomes illegal." 

265 (h). Conflict- A rccent injunction against a strike 
ing laws. qj^ -^^q "Wabash road was dissolved because 

it did not appear that the intending strikers contem- 
plated an "illegal act". If tying up a railroad is not 
yet an illegal act, the tendency of the law shows that 



272 The Protection of Rights. [§ 265 /^ 

people are becoming awake to their rights at a rate 
that will soon make it one. 

Yet despite these decisions of the courts, Pennsyl- 
vania has a statute justifying any strike whatever that 
union rules may sanction Consequently nothing that a 
trade-union sanctions can be an "illegal act"! But 
the Supreme Court of the state takes a different view. 
On March 19, 1906, in the Purvis case before referred 
to, it said: 

* * In attempting to justify their conduct the appellants allege 
authority for it in the act of June 16, 1891, P. L. 300. While 
that act provides that they may devise and adopt ways and 
means to make rules, regulations, by-laws, and resolutions of 
their order effective, it sanctions no rules, regulations, by-laws 
or resolutions to commit wrong, and if it attempted to do so 
by authorizing the appellants to interfere with the absolute rights 
of the appellees, the legislation would be a dead letter, for the 
legislature cannot abolish the Declaration of Rights." 

^ And on the other hand, Illinois has a statute as fol- 
lows : 

' 'Sec. 158. If any two or more persons shall combine for the 
purpose of depriving the owner or possessor of property of its 
lawful use and management or of preventing by threats, sug- 
gestions of danger or any unlawful means, any person from 
being employed by or obtaining employment from any such 
owner or possessor of property, on such terms as the parties 
concerned may agree upon, such person so offending shall be 
fined not exceeding $500, or confined in the county jail not ex- 
ceeding six months. 

"Sec. 159. If any person shall, by threat, intimidation or 
unlawful interference, seek to prevent any other person from 
working or obtaining work at any lawful business on any terms 
he may see fit, such person so offending shall be fined not 
exceeding $200." 

But either way, as already intimated, legislative acts 
are apt to become dead letters, because they are much 
influenced by ignorant clamor; the body of the com- 
mon law which has grown up from the decisions of 
trained judges, has a tendency to put the right of 
striking with the right of revolution — counter to law, 
justifiable only in the absence of other remedies for 



§ 266] Personal Property. 273 

unbearable ill — a right to be handled, not recklessly, 
as is the present fashion, but only in the gravest need, 
and to be tested only by results. 

265 (/;. Duty of Under this view, whether, in any special 
district attorneys, casc, a Strike should be justified as a revo- 
lution, should depend on public opinion, as represented 
by a jury. There need be no fear that any jury will 
favor capital as against labor, and there can be little 
doubt that in the absence of conflicting statutes, when- 
ever it shall appear that any public utility is paralyzed 
by a conspiracy, it is a district attorney's duty, however 
much it has been neglected, to investigate the con- 
spiracy, and if he feels warranted, to propose the indict- 
ment of the conspirators. While, as already said, public 
opinion could be depended upon for all reasonable 
leniency, no one who has seen, for instance, many thou- 
sands of the population of New York City deprived of 
their usual means of reaching business and returning 
home, by the conspiracy of a much smaller -number of 
railroad employees, can have much doubt of what pub- 
lic opinion in such a case will eventually be. The rights 
of the public are not going to be left forever under the 
dictation of labor leaders, or even of trade-union con- 
ferences, and there cannot be many years before public 
opinion will demand statutes perhaps like those of Aus- 
tralasia (278 a. ff.), to protect public rights against them. 
So much for the general attitude of the law regarding 
strikes. 

266. The work- ^s to the Specific end of coercing men 

man's freedom. into unions, the attempt to make all men 
in a trade join the union was declared in 1905 by Chief 
Justice Knowlton of Massachusetts to be against pub- 
lic policy, because it was an attempt to create a monopoly 
of labor in that branch. Many other judges have held 
the same. 

In the same decision. Judge Knowlton allowed dam- 
ages against a trade-union officer for forcing an em- 
ployer to discharge a non-union man. 

In New York a statute prohibiting an employer from 



2 74 ^^^ Protection of Rights. [§ 266 

making non-membership of a union a condition of em- 
ployment, has been declared unconstitutional. But on 
the other hand, Professor Seager * says: 

"The Court of Appeals of New York State, in branding as a 
conspiracy the effort of a union to secure the discharge of a 
non-union man, used the following language: 'Public policy 
and the interests of society favor the utmost freedom in the 
citizen to pursue his lawful trade or calling, and if the purpose 
of an organization or combination of workingmen be to hamper 
or restrict that freedom, and through contracts or arrangements 
with employers to coerce other workingmen to become members 
of the organization and to come under its rules and conditions, 
under the penalty of loss of their position and of deprivation 
of employment, then that purpose seems clearly unlawful and 
militates against the spirit of our Government and the nature 
of its institutions, 't But a few years later % the same court, 
looking at the same question more from the point of view of 
labor unions, decided that a strike for a similar purpose was 
lawful, on the ground that the object sought was not the injury 
of the non-union employee, but the preservation of the union. 
So long as there seemed to be no malice in the action, and 
violence and intimidation were not resorted to, it was held 
that the incidental injury to the non-unionist could not render 
it a conspiracy. 

"This reversal of opinion illustrates fairly well the difficulties 
which American courts encounter in their efforts to apply the 
common law of conspiracy to labor cases, and 
267. The law chaotic, explains Avhy they arrive at such diverse con- 
clusions as are shown by the authoritative decisions of the 
courts of the different states. It would be a great gain if the 
whole question of the nature of conspiracy in connection with 
trade disputes could be settled by statute in the United States 
as it was in Great Britain by the Act of 1875." 

Uniformity could not be hoped for in state legisla- 
tion. But perhaps a model for state legislation could 

* This chapter is largely indebted to the chapter on the 
Legal Regulation of Labor in Professor Seager's " Introduction 
to Economics" and to Professor T. S. Adams's chapter on 
Labor Laws in "Labor Problems". With those two admi- 
rable and up-to-date works in hand, it would be worse than 
superfluous for the author of a brief summary like this, to ex- 
plore the entire ground again. For a fuller treatment, the 
reader is strongly advised to consult those works. 

t In Curran vs. Gallen, 152 N. Y. 33 (1897). 

X In National Protective Association vs. Cummings, 170 
N. Y. 315 (1902). 



§268] Personal Property. 275 

be hoped for m a United States statute regarding a con- 
spiracy to interrupt commerce between the states. 

Truly, the law has as yet handled labor questions only 
in a very wobbly way. Professor Seager says else- 
where : 

"There is scarcely a regulation, from, a simple restriction on 
the age at which children may be employed to the provision 
that men may work only eight hours a day in specified industries, 
that has not been declared unconstitutional in certain sections 
of the country, only to be upheld as a legitimate exercise of 
the police power in others." 

The vacillation and uncertainty of the law have been 
great in America, not only because of the fact that 
each of forty-odd states has its own set of laws, but 
by the decisions of an elective judiciary seeking the 
labor vote, and by statutes passed at Labor's demand. 
Yet the natural evolution of law is unquestionably toward 
the increased protection of the right to work by those 
who want to work. 

Slow as the law has been, it has now reached a secure 
and consistent position against the picket and the 
boycott. 

268. Picketing ^^ to picketing, the courts, with prac- 

unlawfui. tical unanimity, are taking very decided 

ground that it is an unlawful invasion of private rights. 

The early injunctions against picketing were quite 
generally on the ground that the common law is against 
entiting away a servant or an employee, unless possi- 
bly to secure an advance or prevent a decline of wages. 
This of course would not permit picketing in a sympa- 
thetic strike or a closed-shop one, or one resulting from 
a discharge of hands. But later, very strong general 
ground has been taken against picketing as tending to 
disturb the peace. 

Judge McPherson, sitting in the United States Cir- 
cuit bench for the Southern District of Iowa, on the 
5th of July, 1905, said:* 

* From an address of Hon. T. J. Mahoney before the Citizens' 
Industrial Association of America, Chicago, November, 1905. 



276 The Protection of Rights. [§ 268 

" 'There is and can be no such thing as peaceful picketing 
any more than there can be chaste vulgarity, or peaceful mob- 
bing, or lawful lynching. 

" ' A portion of this language was adopted and amplified in an 
opinion of the Appellate Court of Illinois, handed down on the 
3d of October, 1905, the court saying: 

" ' "The picket system once established, the intimidation, 
assaults, slugging and bloodshed followed as naturally and 
inevitably as night follows day. There can be no such thing as 
peaceful, 'polite and gentlemanly' picketing any more than 
there can be chaste, 'polite and gentlemanly' vulgarity, or 
peaceful mobbing or lawful lynching. 

" ' "It is idle to talk of picketing for lawful persuasive pur- 
poses. Men do not form picket lines for the purpose of con- 
versation and lawful persuasion. . . . Its use is a form of unlawful 
coercion." ' 

"After Judge McPherson had filed the opinion referred to, 
the managers of the strike abandoned the use of the word 
'picketing' and adopted that of 'reporting', the pretense being 
that their acts could possibly be justified by changing the name, 
but the character of the work done by the ' reporters ' was iden- 
tical with that formerly performed by the 'pickets'. . . . The 
system being the same under a different name, deserved and 
received from the court the same condemnation that had previ- 
ously been visited upon picketing." 

One of the latest decisions comes from the United 
States District Court sitting at Milwaukee, and is thus 
reported in the New York Times: 

"Milwaukee, June 17," [1906]. — " In a sweeping injunction 
United States Judge J. V. Quarles forbade the iron-molders' 
unions and sixty-one individual members from in any way in- 
terfering with the business of the Allis-Chalmers Company. 

* 'The strikers are enjoined from impeding, hindering, obstruct- 
ing or interfering with any of the business of the company, and 
from entering the grounds or premises of the complainant 
against its wish. They are enjoined from compelling or attempt- 
ing to compel or induce by use of threats or intimidation of 
any sort, or by fraud or deception or violence, any person to 
leave the employment of the plaintiff company, and also from 
attempting to persuade the employes of the company to break 
their contracts and leave the employ of the plaintiff. 

"Judge Quarles further commands the striking molders to 
desist from congregating at or near the premises of the company 
with the purpose to intimidate or obstruct, surround or impede 
any of the employees of the plaintiff. The order further pro- 
vides that the defendants are not even to go to the homes of 



§ 269] Personal Property. 277 

any of the employees for the purpose of persuading them into 
leaving the Allis-Chalmers Company." 

Similarly, an injunction in the Connecticut Superior 
Court, June 27, 1906, restrains the union from "per- 
suading or cajoling" the complainant's employees to 
leave work. 

In the Typothetae case in Chicago in 1905, the court 
enjoined picketing not only at the factory, 

but " about or near /any place where their employees are lodged 
or boarded, for the purpose of compelling, inducing or soliciting 
the employees of any of said complainants to leave their ser- 
vice; . . . from attempting by bribery, payment or promise 
of money, offers of transportation or other rewards, to induce 
the employees of any of said complainants to leave their service." 

The early decisions against picketing have generally 
been not only against enticing the employee away, but 
also on the ground that it engenders violence. The 
later ones evidently consider the fact that it is an 
unjustifiable conspiracy against the right to carry on 
business. 

As to the liabiHty of unions and their 

hHi?« fnr'TamJlr^Pc mcmbcrs, for damages in strikes and boy- 

Diiiiy Tor aamages. , . • xi 1 x x -c ^t, • ^ Ix, 

cotts : m the last quarter or the nineteenth 

century, while the English law took the direction of 
tolerance toward strikes, it took a counter-direction 
regarding the liability of trade-union funds for dam- 
ages inflicted in consequence of union action. It had 
been held that as the unions were not corporate 
bodies they were beyond the reach of suits, and that 
their members could only be reached as individuals. 
The drift of opinion counter to this position became 
decisive in 1 901, when the House of Lords held in the 
celebrated Taff-Vale case that the unions' funds were 
liable, and as there is no limited liability without in- 
corporation (154 a), this decision would probably make 
each member liable for the total amount of any damages 
that might be granted against a union. The damages in 
this case were /^ 23, 000. The English unions are now 



278 The Protection of Rights. ^ [§ 26q 

trying hard to have the effect of the decision annulled 
by statute — one of the typical unionists' attacks on 
the law. 

In the United States there are already several de- 
cisions in the same direction: for example, the funds 
of the Waterbury, Conn., unions were attached for 
damages resulting from violence in the street-railway 
strike of 1903, the houses of the Danbury boycotters 
are under attachment, and so are the bank accounts of 
the men in Rutland, Vt., who interfered with their 
employers getting help in 1903. 

For stopping work, by master or man, to the unrea- 
sonable detriment of others, it is very probable that 
the law will soon clearly see the reasonableness of 
damages: inasmuch as for leading others to stop work, 
damages have already been granted. 

There is an important consideration which I cannot 
express better than I have already done in an earlier 
work,* which I will therefore venture to quote again: 

Damages under such circumstances could generally 
be collected from only one side — if the capitalist is 
in the wrong, the laborer has an easy remedy; if the 
laborer is in the wrong, the capitalist has virtually 
none. This is one reason why employers do not always 
contract with their employees for a reasonable notice 
from either side before severing their relations. And 
at best, the law is a slow and imperfect remedy, tho 
the best we have. Not the least of the advantages that 
would come to society from an increased proportion of 
property-holders, would be increased faithfulness to 
contracts, from fear of damages. This being absent, 
- /i^/srfe- hovv^ever, in order to put the two sides on an 

meanor'as a equality in Contracting, the violation of a 

substitute. labor-contract might be made a misde- 

meanor subject to imprisonment. Such a law would guard 
the poor man against the rich man more effectively 
than a money penalty, which the rich man could afford 
to disregard; and it would guard the rich man against 

* Op. cit. 



§ 270] Personal Property. 279 

the poor man, by the only penalty which could be en- 
forced. Such a law would have the merit that under 
it, juries could be depended upon to treat the poor 
man at least as justly as the rich. This point deserves 
the careful consideration of all who feel an interest 
in the improvement of the law. 

270. Some sum- The Alabama statute prescribes as un- 
maries of the law. lawful the following acts : 

"A conspiracy between two or more persons to prevent any 
person, firm or corporation from carrying on any lawful busi- 
ness within the state, or for the purpose of interfering with 
the same. 

" The loitering of one or more persons about a place of busi- 
ness for the purpose of inducing others not to buy from, sell to 
or have business dealings with a person, firm or corporation, or 
to picket any works or place of business for the purpose of 
interfering with its business. 

"The printing or circulation of 'any notice of boycott, boy- 
cott cards, stickers, dodgers or unfair lists, publishing or 
declaring that a boycott or ban exists, or has existed, or is 
contemplated', or publishing the name of any public official or 
judicial officer upon any blacklist, unfair list or other similar 
list because of any lawful act or decision of such official. 

"The use of force, threats or other means of intimidation 
to prevent any person from engaging in any lawful occupation. 

" For any person, firm or corporation to maintain a blacklist 
or to notify any other firm or corporation of the names thereon 
to prevent the person so named from receiving employment "' 

Vice-Chancellor Pitney of New Jersey summed up 
the law in 1903: 

" First — That all sorts of laborers may lawfully combine and 
form unions for their mutual benefit, and that they may use all 
lawful means to promote their own interests, being careful in 
so doing not to infringe on the rights of others. 

" Second — One lawful means to that end is the refusal to 
work on terms offered by the employer. 

" Third — An unlawful means is to hinder or prevent others 
from working for an employer under such terms as they shall 
see fit. 

' ' Fourth — One means of such hindering and preventing is in 
various ways to render it either difficult or uncomfortable for 
such willing workmen so to work. This is an unlawful means. 

" Fifth — Another unlawful means in common use to hinder 
or prevent willing employees from working, and to compel 



28o The Protection of Rights. [ § 270 

employers to accede to terms which the}^ would not other- 
wise adopt, is the boycott in its various forms." 

Injunctions have been issued against 
271 Injunctions. ^^^^^^ ^^^^j fo^-jn of boycott palpable 

enough to recognize, and damages have been awarded 
in several cases. 

The Anti-Boycott law in Wisconsin was enforced 
in so comparatively inoffensive a matter as two news- 
papers refusing to print advertisements from the 
patrons of a third which had raised its rates higher 
than theirs, unless at the same rates. As bearing on 
such innocent acts as stopping buying and stopping 
working, which are at the root of strikes and boycotts, 
Mr. Mahoney said in the address already quoted from, 
that the courts 

' no longer hesitate to grant injunctions which shall not only 
prevent the perpetration of assaults and the destruction of 
property, but shall equally protect the peace of mind of willing 
employees, and give security from injuries and interference with 
the rights of employers to carry on their business. . . . The 
courts are equally in accord in exercising the necessary right 
to punish for contempt those who insist upon violating the 
injunctive orders. There was a time in the not very remote 
past when much outcry was raised against trials for contempt 
being conducted by the court instead of by a jury, but . . . the 
spectacle was all too frequent, of a jury acquitting men whose 
guilt was more than abundantly established." 

But this does not warrant agitation for doing away 
with injunctions, but only for doing away with the 
judge's power to punish under them without a jury. 
A bill for the purpose is now before Congress. That, 
however, is not what "Labor" wants: it wants its own 
sweet will free from the interference of either judge or 
jury. 

Yet even where the injunctions have not held, they 
have been of value in giving both sides time to stop 
and think. But the unions have got so much in the 
habit of forcing their own way, regardless of all law, 
that, altho they are constantly seeking injunctions 
against their employers, they are ver3/ bitter toward 



§ 271] Personal Property. 281 

injunctions wh-en issued against themselves, and have 
sought to have statutes against granting any injunctions 
at all in labor disputes. This has a show of fairness 
because it would appear to apply equally to both sides. 
But the show is specious (altho it seems to have deceived 
the President of the United States while the proofs of 
this book were being read) : because the employers are 
in a small minority and hardly ever resort to violence. 
Granting the short-sighted view of the unions that any 
lasting good can come from violence, they can well 
afford to endure the little violence the other side is apt 
to attempt, if they can have free swing for their own 
habitual lawlessness. On this subject of injunctions I 
again resort to some earlier expressions.* 

There is one form of anarchism so specious that it 
has deceived many good men. It proposes to do away 
with government, by doing away with a little at a time; 
and its present object of attack is what it is pleased to 
call 'government by injunction'. Now injunction takes 
the place, in government, of the ounce of preventive. 
It is better to prevent lawlessness than to punish it. 
Injunction is merely the exercise by a judge, of the 
authority to prohibit an act, not necessarily itself pun- 
ishable at law, which he believes likely to lead to acts 
which are punishable at law, and no sane man can 
doubt that the proper exercise of this authority effects 
a great saving of public peace and safety. The injunc- 
tion has been abused, as has every feature of the law: 
judges are but human, but no sane man claims that 
that fact should do away with the law. Those who 
object to injunctions are (many of them without know- 
ing it) in precisely the same condition as if they objected 
to the punishment of the actions which injunctions are 
issued to guard against, while a large majority of those 
who object to injunctions, object simply because injunc- 
tions prevent their having their own way; and they 
object on the same grounds on which they object to 
the police and militia as well as to the courts — it is 

* Op. cit. 



282 The Protection of Rights. [§271 

simply the objection to all authority — it is the spirit of 
anarchy. 

The assumption by Labor that of right it owns every- 
thing, can alone account for some of its claims. The 
most extreme of them, perhaps, is illustrated in the 
bill advocated by Mr. Gompers, the president of the 
American Federation of Labor, which would prevent 
United States courts from issuing injunctions in any 
contention between employers and their men, unless 
to guard some property or right against damage that 
could not be made good, and then (here is the extreme 
claim) the bill goes on to provide that "for the pur- 
poses of this act, no right to carry on business of any 
particular kind at any particular place, or at all, shall 
be considered or treated as property, or as constituting 
a property right." 

This of course is an almost laughably disguised 
scheme to obtain from legislation a right to destroy 
such property at will, through the picket and boycott, 
which the courts have abundantly declared counter 
to American liberty. The two million labor-unionists 
are simply claiming absolute control over the rest of the 
American people. . 

At the meeting of the National Civic Federation in 
December, 1906, the counsel for the American Federa- 
tion of Labor argued that the laborer's right in his 
labor is just the same thing as an employer's "right 
to carry on business of any particular kind at any 
particular place, or at all". He challenged discussion 
of the point, and said that he had always found dis- 
cussion of it evaded. The claim seems to me very 
much like a claim that because a man's body is made 
up of cells, a cell is the same thing as a man. In ■'"his 
connection, however, the fallacy lies in the fact that 
no laborer ever yet sought the protection of a court 
for his property in his Right to Work, unless it was 
for protection from the very men against whom the 
employer too seeks protection for his Right to Work — 
his right to carry on his business. Therefore the very 
identity in the two properties, be it real or fanciful, 



§ 272 a] Personal Property. 283 

which the Federation of Labor claims, is an argument 
in favor of the very court protection of both which 
the Federation seeks to paralyze in the case of the 
employer's right — a very pretty example, it seems to 
me, of the reasoning on which all labor coercion is 
based. There is probably no more remarkable instance 
of the madness which can be produced by a brief period 
of successful aggression before the aggrieved have time 
to organize for defence. The counter-organization has 
begun, however, and the madness seems to have reached 
the pitch where it indicates the intention of the gods 
to destroy. But if this could mean the permanent 
destruction of labor organizations, it would be deplorable. 
Yet the present organizations will be destroyed if they 
cannot be reformed. There will be better ones in 
either event, and it is not yet proved that they must be 
new ones. 



272. Regulation Leaving now the law's regulation of 

of wages hours labor's attempts at coercion, let us devote 
and conditions. ^ ^^^^ ^^ -^^ general attitude regarding 

the regulation of wages, hours and conditions. 

Professor Adams, who certainly will not be accused 
of unfavorably representing Labor's side, says: * 

272(a). The labor "In the United States . . . the history of 
trust again. labor legislation is one long tortuous record of 

special protection to the working classes, secured by subtle 
limitation and frank disregard of the doctrines of free contract, 
and by class legislation. . . . Labor organizations are specifically 
exempted in a number of states from the operation of the anti- 
trust acts (altho such exemption has been held to annul the 
whole law) ; and in their practical execution the anti-trust laws 
have been directed against combinations of employers in re- 
straint of trade rather than against the combination of employees 
which are equally in restraint of trade." 

Of Labor laws in the United States, Professor Seagerf 

says: 

" There are both state and national laws that directly further 
the monopolistic ambitions of trade-unions. The state of Penn- 

* Op. cit. t Op. cit. 



284 The Protection of Rights. [§ 272 a 

sylvania has a law requiring men who wish to become master 
miners to work as helpers for a certain period and to pass 
then a state examination. New York state has similar laws 
in reference to plumbers and horseshoers. The [alleged] pur- 
pose of such statutes is of course to insure a certain degree 
of proficiency on the part of workmen who perform these 
important services, but that they assist trade-unions in their 
efforts to control the supply of labor in their trades is beyond 
question. A Federal law which operates in the same direction 
is that prohibiting the entrance into the country of workmen 
under contract of employment. It might appear on general 
principles that the immigrant whose reputation at home was 
such that he could secure a contract of employment from an 
employer in this country, would be a better citizen than the 
immigrant who was attracted only by the vague hope of better- 
ing his condition, but this view disregards the special interest 
of those with whom the newcomer would compete for employ- 
ment. . . . He enters the country as a non-unionist, or 'scab'. 
. . . The law which prevents such resort to the foreign labor 
market to break a strike . . . serves to confirm a close union's 
monopoly of the labor supply, at the expense of the whole com- 
munity." 

Of course such utterly irrational laws cannot stand, 
and never would have been passed if the community in 
general were as well organized (as it is rapidly becoming) 
against favoritism in legislation, as the unions are or- 
ganized for securing it; or even if capital were not so 
engrossed in securing special, privileges from legislation, 
that it seldom spares attention to general legislation 
affecting its general rights, but is content to rest upon 
its power to take care of them when exigencies arise. 

Professor Seager farther says : 

272 (b). Protecting ' ' The Suprenie Court of Colorado declared 
the laborer unconstitutional an eight-hour law applying to 

against himself. men employed in the mining and smelting 
industries on the ground that if such a law was calculated 
to protect the health or morals of anybody, it could only 
be of the very man whose work was restricted, and that 
the legislature had no right to restrict freedom of contract for 
the benefit only of the persons whose liberty was thus limited; 
and yet the Supreme Court of the United States had declared 
in upholding the constitutionality of an identical statute pre- 
viously passed by the state of Utah, that the legislature had 
the right to protect an individual even 'against himself, on 
the ground that ' the state still retains an interest in, his welfare 



§ 272 c] Personal Property. 285 

no matter how reckless he may be' , and that when 'the individual 
health, safety and welfare are sacrificed or neglected the state 
must suffer ' . " 

Following out the idea of "protecting the laborer 
against himself", Professor Seager turns to another 
decision of the United States Supreme Court, which 

' ' affirms the propriety of labor laws on the general ground that 
employers and employees are unequal in bargaining power. 
'The former naturally desire to obtain as much labor as pos- 
sible from their employees, while the latter are often induced 
by fear of discharge to conform to regulations which their 
judgment, fairly exercised, would pronounce to be detrimental 
to their health and strength. In other words, the proprietors 
lay down the rules, and the laborers are practically constrained 
to obey them. In such cases self-interest is often an unsafe 
guide, and the legislature may properly interpose its authority.' 
Finally, it affirms the principle already quoted, that in the 
exercise of its police power the legislature has the right to 
protect a man even against himself." 

This principle may be regarded as established law. 
New York goes so far as to "protect a man against 
himself" by punishing attempts at suicide — which, 
paradoxically, puts a premium on the success of the 
very act it prohibits. There is a point at which this 
doctrine would involve the most enervating paternal- 
ism — a point at which the individual must take the 
consequences of his own acts. On this point Professor 
Seager says : 

" In Great Britain and the United States the notion that the 
legislative power should not be used to regulate hours and 
conditions of employment has been abandoned by most thought- 
ful persons, but the prejudice against any interference with 
wages, like that practiced in New Zealand and other Australian 
states, remains nearly as strong as ever. There is, of course, 
good ground for this distinction. Hours and other conditions 
272 (c). Wages of employment affect directly the health and 
unlike conditions, vigor of the working classes, wages only indi- 
rectly. Moreover, workmen are less mindful of their own inter- 
ests in connection with hours and sanitary arrangements than 
in connection with wages. Making all allowance for these 
considerations, many thoughtful persons still believe that, 
under certain circumstances, notably those found in connection 
with the sweating system, the regulation of wages must also 



286 The Protection of Rights. [§ 272 c 

t)e undertaken by the government if serious evils are to be 
corrected. It is sometimes argued that the law cannot fix the 
rate of wages, but this is contrary both to reason and experience. 
The law cannot fix both wages and the number of persons who 
shall be em.ployed at those wages, but it can declare that no 
one shall be employed in given trades unless paid certain 
minimum wages, and enforce its decree." 

272 (d). The liuing And here follows an admirable utterance 
wage. regarding "the minimum wage", which 

should not be confused with that favorite topic of the 
sentimentaHsts "the hving wage". A great deal has 
been written to the effect that it is an employer's 
duty to give an employee enough to live upon decently, 
whether the employee earns it or not. But this sick- 
ening absurdity should not prevent the reasoning stu- 
dent from giving attention to the following considera- 
tions. 

' ' The result may be an addition to the number of dependents 
who are 'unemployable' at the wages fixed because too ineffi- 
cient to earn them, but it may be better and cheaper for society 
to support such persons in almshouses than to permit their 
competition to hold the wages of great sections of the popula- 
tion down to a starvation level. In order to mark off the 
dependent from other classes the state may find it necessary 
itself to fix a standard by which the abiUty of the individual 
for independent self-support may be determined. Without 
desiring to advocate the establishment by law of standard or 
minimum rates of wages for the sweating trades, the author 
wishes to insist that this policy merits the same unprejudiced 
consideration as is now accorded by intelligent people to pro- 
posals for restricting the employment of children or women, or 
for requiring the use of safety appliances in connection with 
dangerous trades." 

„^„ , , ^ u It is hard to tell just how far the law 

070 /q) Too iTiuch 

care enervating should take carc of a pcrsou, and how far 
and against liberty. ^^ ^^^^^i^ be left to take care of himself. 

Certainly in countries where the government is very 
paternal, the mass of the people are apt to be very 
childish. And yet it is generally agreed that the law 
should prevent cruelty to children and even to animals — • 
that it should limit the hours and sanitary conditions 
under which children and women, and sometimes even 



§272^] Personal Property. 287 

men work; and as already illustrated, many claim that 
it should even protect a man against himself if he 
seeks to do excessive and dangerous things. But this 
can be carried to the extent of infringing upon liberty. 
This danger in protecting him from other dangers, some- 
times leads to strange results. For instance: acci- 
dents from ill-guarded machinery and from laborers 
working when too exhausted to be cautious, annually 
destroy more than twice as many lives in the state of 
New York alone, as were destroyed on our side in the 
Spanish war, not to speak of the larger number maimed 
and crippled. These accidents are more frequent in 
the last weary hour of work than during the rest of 
the day. Yet there are laws requiring machinery to 
be protected, and against the working of men — espe- 
cially on railroads — longer than their attention can 
endure. But when suits for damages have been brought 
under these laws, the courts have sometimes declared 
them unconstitutional, as depriving a man of the liberty 
to work when and where he pleases, while the facts 
were that his "liberty" was only Hobson's choice — 
working as ordered, or throwing up his job. It seems 
as if such statutes ought to be penal as against the 
employer: then the "liberty" of the laborer would not 
be reduced to the miserable alternative of running the 
risk which the employer should obviate, or temporarily 
abandoning the means of supporting himself and his 
family. 

It may be remarked in passing, that, on the other 
hand, employers are frequently subjected to injustice 
in connection with accidents. Juries often mulct them 
for injuries to employees which are the fault not of the 
employers, but of other employees. 

Just as this goes to press, word comes of an interesting 
and suggestive decision to the effect that in a "closed 
shop" the laborer loses his right of action against 
his employer for damages resulting from the fault of a 
fellow workman, because the employer has not been 
untrammeled in his choice of workmen, and of course 
as the workman in the closed shop is inevitably a mem- 



288 The Protection of Rights. [§ 272 ^ 

ber of the union which has circumscribed the employer's 
choice, he shares the responsibihty for the shop being 
closed, and cannot "come into court with clean hands", 
a requisite which equity demands. 

Statutes protecting the community from diseases bred 
in tenements and sweat-shops have often been set aside 
on grounds similar to those stated above — that it is part 
of a man's "liberty" to work where he pleases. It 
is a very difficult question how far the state has a right 
to interfere with the liberty of the individual — his 
liberty as a child to stay away from school, as child 
or man to break down his health by overwork, to expose 
himself to dangerous chemicals and machinery, to buy 
(or sell) dangerous medicines and intoxicants, and to 
get drunk and beat his wife. 

272 (f). Extremes This qucstiou has arrayed some of the 
and the medium, "^ggt miuds against each other. At the 
extremes of opposition are the anarchist, against the 
state's having any rights at all; and the ultramontane 
who would have the state, as merged with the church, 
regulate the minutest functions of the individual con- 
science. Probably the safe and reasonable limit lies 
at the state's right of self-defence. The whole com- 
munity suffers from anybody's ignorance, ill health, 
mutilation, drunkenness, brutality; and has a right 
to guard against any such conditions becoming suffi- 
ciently widespread — directly, or by way of influence 
on popular conscience and sensibilities, as to cost the 
state more than it would cost to keep the evil within 
bounds. What shall be done against any particular 
self-inflicted evil, is of course for legislators to deter- 
mine, but their first inquiry should be, not how great 
an evil it may be to any particular man: for that is 
his own business; but how great an evil is it apt to 
be to men in general: and that alone is their business. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

PERSONAL PROPERTY (CONTINUED). 

Schemes for Distributing it more Evenly (Continued) . 

(V) Remedies on Trial. 

2^3 I A. str' I There can be no reasonable doubt that 

war'and industrial all the decisions alluded to in the preceding 
'^^' chapter, and many more, are steps in a 

process by which industrial war is to be replaced by 
industrial law, just as, in civilized nations, private 
war has been replaced by private law, and interna- 
tional war is being replaced by international law. In 
addition, however, to the evolutionary steps so far 
indicated, some revolutionary experiments are under 
way. 

2y, , I ._ Three legal remedies for conflicts over 
men'ts in , distribution, from which much is hoped, 

Australasia. ^^^ ^^^ actually on trial in Australasia, 

and only in Australasia. They are (I) state competition 
with monopolies, (II) the fixing of a Minimum Wage, 
and (III) Compulsory Arbitration. 

Australasia being so remote, specially illustrates 
the universal unreliability of testimony on controverted 
subjects. Sentimentality and the equally unreason- 
ing antagonism which it tends to arouse in the prac- 
tically disposed, seem to make it almost impossible 
for observers of social experiments even to see cor- 
rectly, not to speak of reporting correctly. The latest 
writer on Australasia, Dr. Victor S. Clark,* is conspicu- 

* "The Labor Movement in Australasia." 

289 



290 The Protection of Rights. [§274 

Otis by the degree to which he has risen superior to 
these influences. He finds both good and evil in the 
minimum -wage commissions and arbitration courts, 
but does not find that either or both of them have 
introduced the millennium. 

The interest as well as the importance of the subject 
justifies a special chapter, whose material I have, with 
the author's kind sanction, largely drawn from Dr. 
Clark's work. 

These experiments being as yet (1907) 
^Ifts to bl discount- restricted to Australasia, have worked only 
ed fot-Amencan {^ ^-^ exceptionally homogcneous com- 
munity, in which British stock with its 
broad-minded love of fair play largely predominates. 
Among the original convicts, many were high-minded 
persons transported for purely political offences; and 
much of the later colonization has consisted of large 
religious organizations possessing capital, character 
and culture. The amount of convict stock to-day is 
not worth considering. 

Dr. Clark says : 

"The consciousness of national kinship ... is greater than 
in America, and for this reason communal sympathies are more 
active. . . . Production is confined largely to raw materials 
which are exported, and consumption is supplied by manu- 
factured goods made in other countries." 

[The inference that wages raised by legislation will 
not greatly affect prices of articles bought by the 
voters, seems contradicted later.] 

"The government, in supplying transport service for the 
inflow and outflow of these commodities, has become the 
largest employer in the colonies. . . . The custom, of appealing 
to the government to decide industrial disputes to which it is 
a party, makes it easier to recur to the same authority to fix 
labor conditions in private employment. . . . Forty-seven per 
cent, of the people reside in cities of not less than four thousand 
inhabitants, as compared with thirty-seven per cent, in the 
United States. The average concentration of working popula- 
tion is therefore greater in those countries, and the labor 
element has better opportunities for organization. . . . The 



§275^] Personal Property. 291 

difference in the wage of skilled and unskilled workers is much 
greater in our own country, where the common laborer is 
usually either a negro or a foreigner. This variation of wages 
in the United States, parallel with national and race lines, lessens 
solidarity of sentiment and class consciousness among work- 
men." 

Mr. Sidney Webb has said: 

"Australian politics and Australian governments are very 
far from perfect, but their faults and their virtues are utterly 
unlike the faults and virtues of America." 

For all these reasons, how the Australasian experi- 
ments would work among the mixed population of the 
United States, or especially among the almost entirely 
foreign population of some regions — and those gen- 
erally the most troublesome regions — and how, more- 
over, they would work under our almost exclusively 
private control of industries, Australasian experience 
gives little indication. 

275. State compe- ^^e first of these remedies on trial— 
tition with monopo- state Competition with monopolies, may 
''®^' be dismissed with a few words. Dr. 

Clark devotes to it but a sentence, tho one enthusiast 
who has discovered in it a panacea, devotes an article 
in a recent periodical.* The simple facts are that 
before there were any monopolies thought of, various 
Australasian communities, for the sake of aiding immi- 
gration and land development, started most of the va- 
rious industries which will be described later. The 

government's credit being better than 
fng capital'^"'^' ^^^^ ^^ individuals, and it wishing to aid 

in opening up the new lands, it borrowed 
money to lend to farmers. This of course brought 
the rate of interest down, and may be considered to 
have been competition with monopoly of capital, if 
such a thing could exist. Of course the indirect effect 
of other government enterprises has been similar, and 

* Everybody's, September, 1906. 



292 The Protection of Rights. [§ 275 b 

275 (b). In some it may be possible that the Australasians 
industries. have saved more in keeping prices down, 

than they have spent in taxes to pay deficits on gov- 
ernment industries. It is even supposable that in any 
community where there is enough political virtue to 
conduct government enterprises honestly, it may be 
worth while to pay the deficits apt to result from their 
inevitable inefficiency as compared with private enter- 
prises, for the sake of guarding against monopolies. 
It is even supposable that Australasia, with her homo- 
geneous British stock, her comparative freedom from 
the demoralizing glitter of superfluous wealth, and 
her other exceptional conditions, may possess the 
degree of political virtue needed to curb monopoly 
by government competition. But nothing has yet 
been done for the mere sake of that result ; and should 
its slight indirect accomplishment so far, encourage 
to successful direct efforts, their success could prove 
nothing for a community like ours, overwhelmed with 
debased immigration, and corrupted by the spectacu- 
lar temptations of misplaced superfluous wealth. 

276. The Minimum As to the minimum wage, already men- 
Wage, tioned (in 272 d, which the student is 
advised to re-read in this connection), in Australasia, 
the idea has been worked out, according to Dr. Clark, 
as follows : 

" The problems presented by sweating and Chinese compe- 
tition were so complex and required so much detailed regula- 
tion that the direct intervention of Parliament was likely to 
prove cumbersome and ineffective. Therefore authority to 
deal with these questions was delegated to subordinate bodies, 
called minimum-wage boards . . . and composed of men 
having practical knowledge of the industry under their juris- 
diction. . . . Their functions do not exceed in principle those 
exercised by railway commissions in America — with the impor- 
tant reservation that they affect private as well as public and 
quasi-public industries. The Victorian Parliament . . . gave 
the boards authority to prescribe a minimum wage for em- 
ployees in certain classes of establishments. This authority 
was granted in order to remedy a special evil — a wage so low 
276 (a). Against that it threatened the common interest of 
sweating. society in maintaining a standard of living 



7 6 (i ] Personal Property. 



293 



among all classes sufficient for healthy social progress. . . . The 
average profits of manufacturers are no higher when sweating 
is rampant, than when a fair wage is paid. . . . The better 
276 (b). Sought by employers rather courted some provision that 
good employers, freed them from the competition of less scrupu- 
lous men of their own class. Moreover, tho the determina- 
tions of wage boards are legislative acts, in essence amendments 
to the factory law, they preserve in some degree the form of 
a voluntary agreement. The boards who pass them are com- 
276 (c). Hovu posed of an equal number of delegates from the 

reguiated employers and employees in the trade in question, 

under a non-partisan chairman, and their decisions are fre- 
quently compromises", formally not unlike collective bargains 
made between trade-unions and employers. . . . They are 
required to ascertain as a question of fact the average wage 
paid by reputable employers, and are forbidden to fix a mini- 
mum higher than the average wage as thus determined. The 
boards are also allowed to fix special rates of pay for aged, 
infirm or slow workers. . . . Employers have applied for 
eleven of the thirty-eight boards established." 

The Arbitration Courts, to be described later, seera to 
be rapidly taking over the functions of the Minimum 
Wage Boards, with results not quite contemplated by 
the originators of either. 

276 (d). Not " When the court prescribes a minimum equal 

always effective.' to or above the average wage previously paid, 
the employer may meet this change by two different policies. 
In order to keep his payroll down, he often lowers the pay of his 
more competent hands, to compensate himself for the higher 
rate he is obliged by law to give his poorer workers." [Or, second, 
New Zealand] "statistics indicate that in probably a third of 
the occupations regulated by the court, the maximum wage 
does not exceed the minimum fixed by the award. The greatest 
variation usually occurs in industries requiring the highest 
degree of skill. In such industries the employer, in order to 
maintain a gradation of wages among his workmen, usually 
discharges his less efficient employees. 

"Slow workers, who are not a negligible element in the in- 
dustrial army, then become a social problem. They form 
from ten to twenty per cent, of all workmen, and their distress 
is an evil greater than ordinary unemployment. Some manu- 
facturers in Victoria dismissed sixty or seventy hands as soon 
as the minimum wage went into eft'ect in their business. The 
labor party proposes to remedy this evil by old-age pensions. To 
absorb her surplus labor. New Zealand has undertaken great 
public works, paid for from loans. Western Australia has until 



294 ^^^ Protection of Rights. [§ 276 (i 

recently possessed a growing field of employment in the newly 
discovered gold districts. New South Wales and Victoria have 
not enjoyed these exceptional conditions, and in the latter state 
especially, the problem of the slow worker has been serious." 

Recyu- Even something like the sweat-shop is 

descence of the beginning to appear — not the healthful 
sweat-shop. ^^^^ industry of earlier times: 

" Slow workers thrown out of employment by the minimum 
wage sometimes open shops in basements and attics, where 
they make goods which they peddle directly to retail dealers, 
or sell to factories at prices lower than the ordinary cost of 
manufacture. This has occurred in boot and harness trades, 
and to some extent in cigar-making. However, only a few 
industries lend themselves to this process of dispersion. No 
handworker can compete with the products of power machinery. 

' ' Testimony as to the influence of the boards upon sweating 
and Chinese competition varies. Both continue to exist in 
Melbourne. I have seen large bundles of clothing going out 
of factories, to be made up by contractors who were evading 
board determinations. Few, if any, strikes have occurred 
where wage determinations are in force. 

276 (f). Excep- ' 'All the Australasian laws give the regulating 

tions allowed. authority power to fix a lower rate of pay for 

slow, aged, and infirm workers; but this is not a sufficient 
remedy. Employers refuse to receive slow workers in their 
shops, because they slacken the pace of other workmen. More- 
over, the formalities required to secure slow-worker permits 
embarrass both employee and employer. 

" Therefore, state regulation of industry places a burden upon 
the weaker members of society." 

Apparently, then, one effect of state regulation of 
wages, even in its short experience, is just what the 
American trade-unions are working hardest against — 
it is concentrating industry and leaving the slow work- 
man in the lurch. 

276 (g). High And to the concentration of industry 

prices resulting, threatening to develop into the trust, to 
unemployment and to the sweat-shop, are added high 
prices which nullify a raised income to those who have 
it, and are a hardship to those who have not: 

"All regulations restricting the freedom of employers in con- 
ducting their business probably add to the cost of production. 



§276^°] Personal Property. 295 

. . . Therefore industrial regulation increases the cost of 
living. . . . The Secretary of Labor in New Zealand says that 
'It has helped to minimize any advance in the workers' wages'." 

276 (h). Bolstering Already efforts are in progress to bolster 
up needed. ^p ^ policy froHi wliich SO much was 

hoped, but which even now, in these important respects, 
seems a failure. Already loom up the usual artificial 
remedies to remedy a remedy. 

" The wage-earner is the direct beneficiary of the minimum 
wage; the farmer pays the increment to the cost of production 
resulting from laws and awards, directly to his own hands, and 
indirectly in a higher price for commodities. . . . The farmer 
cannot recoup himself by adding to the price of his produce, 
for that is determined in the London markets. . . . The farmers 
of New Zealand and Victoria, where the rural classes are rela- 
tively the most influential, have already organized an active 
campaign in opposition to the labor party. Likewise the fac- 
tory operative whose manufactures are exported, or meet the 
competition of imported articles, cannot employ an arbitration 
law to raise his nominal wages without lessening employment 
and defeating his own end of social betterment. But he, like 
the farmer, must pay the increased price for local services and 
products which such a law occasions, and thtis his real wage is 
lowered by the very legislation that was devised for his welfare. 

"The discretion of the judge checks many economic evils 
that might result from state regulation of industry. The in- 
crease of prices is beyond the court's control. . . . 

" Parliament was asked officially to remedy an evil by which 
'the advantages bestowed by progressive legislation are grad- 
ually being nullified and will eventually be destroyed'. A 
similar demand has been made in Victoria, where it is claimed 
that so long as the government fixes wages, it should also fix 
prices [which, outside of a few monopolies, no government has 
been able to do in all recorded time]; for the free manipulation 
of the latter may render ineffective any regulation of the former. 
The same suggestion has been voiced as a future possibility by 
the leader of the labor party in New South Wales. 
276 (i). Points to " The responsibility of the state for a living 

state employment wage, logically leads to the responsibility of the 
and socialism. g^^te for employment at that wage. If these 

two functions of government are generally recognized as moral 
duties, and are realized in political action, the result is state 
socialism, , . , Broader knowledge and profounder study than 
have yet been devoted to this subject are required to give us 
conclusions of value." 



296 The Protection of Rights. [§277 

The provisions for "slov/ workers" cer- 
and'ttftSuawr tainly look as if the law had begun in an 
effort to rise superior to Natural Law, and, 
as always happens in such a case, were being perforce 
tinkered back into conformity with Nature. This gives 
a very discouraging outlook for the working of the 
Minimum Wage scheme, but while all caution should be 
used not to go counter to Nature, it should never be for- 
gotten that Nature's processes, when ascertained, can 
be aided by human intelligence and sympathy, and 
that in social affairs, experiments are as justifiable as in 
mechanics and chemistry. But extravagant and explo- 
sive experiments are foolish in all. More in regard to 
the experiments of the Minimum Wage will appear as 
we discuss the functions of the Arbitration Courts. 

A decreed and enforced wage can make employers 
prefe?; to stop business, or can make employees prefer 
to beg; but it can never secure the payment of wages 
materially different from what would be secured by the 
laws of supply and demand acting in a medium of fluid 
competition. The only legitimate function of Arbitra- 
tion Courts (but it includes many others) is to keep 
competition fluid. This will give them enough to do, 
and give them glory enough if they do it. In doing 
it, they inevitably do all the rational work that Minimum 
Wage Boards can do, which fact is abundantly proved 
by the ease with which the courts are absorbing the 
functions of the boards. 

278. The Arbitra- Regarding Arbitration Courts, as Aus- 
tion Courts. tralasia, like the United States, is made 

up of a number of commonwealths passing most of 
their own laws, there has been a variety of experience, 
which now includes experience under a general law 
for the whole colony. 

Unlike America, where the immigrants have brought 
in a large element of Latin imagination and German 
sentimentalism, Australasia has little imagination, senti- 
ment or theory, but a very large element of hard- 
headed British common sense, and circumstances pecul- 



§ 278 a] Personal Property. 297 

iarly favorable to its exercise — a homogeneous British 
community, plenty to do, a minimum stupid and venal 
vote, a British respect (which far surpasses our alleged 
one) for education and experience, and (partly in conse- 
quence) a salutary scarcity of the ranter and the dema- 
gogue. The curse of the relations between Labor and En- 
terprise has been that poisonous product of rank democ- 
racy. He thrives on struggle : arbitration has no place 
for him; he is opposed to it. His attitude is that the 
relations between employee and employer are those of 
irrepressible conflict over the product. Mr. Gompers, 
the present successor of the long line of failures at the 
head of American Labor, has said: "It is a fight." 
But it is a fight in which, as a fight, Labor can never 
have any permanent success, for the simple reason that 
as fast as Labor develops honesty and brains, the bulk 
of them insensibly drift to the other side, in the ranks 
of the employers. The employers who were not drawn 
from Labor's ranks are too few to be worth taking into 
account. While the labor-leaders fatten on conflict, 
for the men there is no visible hope quicker than their 
slow advance in productive capacity, and the slow 
increase of fluidity in competition, of justice and of 
sympathy, unless that hope be compulsory arbitration. 
The hard-headed Australasians seem to have real- 
ized all this, and never to have had any use for Mr. 
Powderly or Mr. Debs or Sam Parks or Mr. Gom- 
pers with his "fight". After a few strikes that were 
passing zephyrs in comparison with some that those 
men have stirred up, the community in general, ap- 
parently including a large proportion of the working- 
men, did not propose to have any more fight. They 
278 (a), started to began with asking the two sides to arbi- 
preuent strikes. tratc, and giving them facilities, and when 
that scheme would not work, they forced thern to arbi- 
trate. The general motive of the arbitration laws was 
to protect the community and the men's families from 
the follies of strikes. There seems to have been no claim 
made that the men were not at liberty to damage merely 
themselves. 



298 The Protection of Rights. [§ 278 a 

It will help the reader to understand the development 
of the courts, to be reminded again that the colony is a 
federation of states somewhat like the American union. 
Of these, on the continent of Australia are five, namely, 
Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, New 
South Wales (capital, Sydney), and Victoria (capital, 
Melbourne). Something over a hundred miles south of 
the continent, lies another state, Tasmania, and some 
twelve hundred miles east of Australia, and a little 
south, is still another state, New Zealand. On the 
eastern side of the continent are the continental states 
New South Wales and Victoria, nearest to Nev/ Zealand, 
which share with it the leadership in population, wealth, 
and activity in social experiment. A little care in 
memorizing these simple facts will be of service as we 
proceed. 

The first Australasian experiment of note in Com- 
pulsory Arbitration, was New Zealand's Industrial 
Arbitration Act of 1894, much expanded in 1900 and 
adopted in its main features by Western Australia and 
New South Wales. 
„^_ , _ ^, Efforts have been made in almost every 

279 I riGitsctiVGriGSS . 

of Voluntary civilized State to reconcile labor disputes by 

Arbitration. boards for voluntary conciliation, such 

boards being often established by legislation. In cases 
of little importance their a,wards have been often 
accepted; in cases of great imiportance, seldom. Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's coal-strike commission recommended 
statutes authorizing governors to appoint "commis- 
sions of compulsory investigation" with full power of 
calling witnesses and examining them under oath, when 
labor disputes threaten serious disadvantage to the 
community. The mere reports of such commissions 
would do something to settle disputes, without com- 
pulsory arbitration. Nevertheless after several seri- 
ous and disgraceful strikes in Australasia during the 
earlier nineties of the last century, Mr. Reeves, the New 
Zealand Minister of Labor, made a very thorough study 
of all that had been done anywhere by way of arbitra- 
tion and conciliation, and concluded that for the award 



§2 8oa] Personal Property. 299 

to have any effect, it must be corapulsory, or at least 
that nothing worth while had been accomplished where 
the award was not compulsory, a main difficulty being 
that it was very hard to get either the party with the 
v\^eak reasons, or the one with "the heaviest artillery", 
to go into court. 

280. The first ^*-* ^^ ^^94- Mr. Reeves laid before the 

Compulsory Arbi- New Zealand Parliament a Compulsory 
trationAct. Arbitration Act. It begins to look as if 

this step in the little parliament of an island in the 
Pacific, which to the vast majority of the civilized world 
is little more than a name, may yet be regarded as 
one of the most important of the world's pieces of 
constructive legislation. I am not prepared to suggest 
that it probably will, but I suspect that it not improbably 
may. This suspicion I have reached after a very full 
faith in its impracticability, based on a priori con- 
siderations, followed by a study of its actual results, 
including those of similar acts in Australasia v/hich 
have sprung from it. 

Among a great many wise and careful details, the act 
provided that the court should be appointed by the 
Governor General, and consist of a Judge of the Supreme 
Court, a representative of workingmen to be chosen 
from a list submitted by them, and a representative 
of employers similarly selected. 

Operatives could appear before the 
mfyinior.s^^"'"''^ ^^^"^^ o^ly tlirough their unions. This not 
only to avoid petty disputes, but because 
all troubles worth avoiding have hitherto come from 
unions. If any men are in danger of losing their chance 
in court, the law requires unions to admit members 
freely, and but seven men are required to form a union 
where none exists. 

Employers could appear individually or in organiza- 
tions. 

The tendency was to favor unionists as against non- 
unionists, because the former must bear the brunt of 
the contentions. Non-unionists could not go into court, 



300 The Protection of Rights. [§ 280 a 

and consequently could not hale their employers into 
court, but they were free to strike. 

The court could decide or dismiss any question brought 
before it, and there is no appeal. 

Powers of summoning witnesses and getting expert 
advice are similar to those of courts in general; even 
additional members of the court could be elected in 
special cases. 

Books of account could be called for, but examined 
only in secret. Yet rather than produce their books, 
employers have sometimes come to an agreement with 
their men — and in one case at least, an agreement which 
was renewed. 

Mr. Lloyd, who wrote in 1890,* and from whom most 
of the facts regarding the Arbitration Courts up to his 
time, have been taken, says: 

* It is a curious phenomenon of antipodal public opinion that 
America is being swept by waves of opposition on one side 
of society to trade-unions and of opposition on the other side 
to unions of capitaUsts, while in New Zealand the people and 
the government favor the fullest organization of both." 

This raises the interesting question whether with 
courts in which to fight out their differences, the two 
extremes of the industrial world might not keep each 
other's excesses in order, without the rest of the com- 
munity being troubled with either. 

280 (b). Could dis- Objectors to compulsory arbitration mis- 
miss trivial claims, trusted the tendency of the workmen to 
appeal to the courts on worthless grounds, and to 
expect from them impossible results. This fear has 
been to some extent justified; but men will not risk 
strikes for reasons as w^orthless as some that lead them 
to seek arbitration. Yet certainly in many cases, arbi- 
tration takes the place of strikes, and is vastly pref- 
erable to strikes „ 

Many students of such matters — prob- 
c . amages. ^^^^ ^^ would be Safe to Say most — among 

whom I confess myself to be one, believed that the 

* "A Country without Strikes", by Henry Demarest Lloyd. 



§ 2 Sod] Personal Property. 301 

compulsory courts would be ineffective, mainly on the 
ground that nothing could be recovered when damages 
were given against people who had nothing. But our 
expectations have been confounded, in that there have 
been no occasions to decree very serious damages. 
Occasions for great damages, like strikes, boycotts and 
arson, have been taken care of by the preventive ounce 
of argument and adjudication, rather than by the cura- 
tive pound of damages, 
oon /^. cvt,^,,/ Another objection was that men may 

zoU ("/. raiznjui 111, iij ,1 

acceptance of be Compelled to work, but cannot be com- 
ecrees. pelled to work efficiently. Yet a good 

deal of efffcient work has been done under the coercion 
of the lash; and a good deal more under the coercion 
of the stomach; and the coercion of a respected court 
where one has been fairly heard, hardly seems more 
repugnant than that of an unsuccessful strike, espe- 
cially as bitterness has seldom been engendered in reach- 
ing the conclusions of the courts. 

As it has been objected : ' ' You cannot collect damages 
from the poor and you cannot force them to work well 
if they do not want to," so it has been objected: "You 
cannot make men conduct business under conditions 
which they consider unfair." Yes, you can: they 
would rather put up with considerable injustice than 
have their capital and their brains lie idle. But they 
need not be irked with much injustice or even with 
any, under compulsory arbitration: all these objec- 
tions have been against extreme possibilities, which, 
with capable and well-meaning courts, have seldom 
occurred, and as the courts grow in experience, are 
occurring more seldom. 

Mr. Reeves wrote to the London Times: 

" Why assume that the awards of a competent tribunal will be 
intolerable to one side or the other? It is likely enough, nay, 
certain, that all awards must be disagreeable to somebody, 
but intolerable is a word which presupposes that awards are 
likely to be made which will involve one side or the other in 
ruin, or drive it to desperation." 



302 The Protection of Rights. [§ 2806- 

„or> / . n Another objection was that you can- 

280 (e). Compe- 11 1 -j. ^^ 

tence of courts in not nx v/ages by law ; and it was well 

business affairs, ^^^^^^ -^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ g^ ^-^^^ COUnter tO 

natural law. But the object of the court has been to 
ascertain from very thorough investigation what wages 
naturally should be, and so decree them. Probably 
the job is generally better done in that way, than 
through a strike or a lockout. 

It has also been urged that you could not get prac- 
tical business wisdom out of a court. But the world 
has been doing that for a good many centuries, and 
that, too, before, as in Australasia, business men were 
made members of the court, with power to call in others 
as need might arise. 

280 (f). Effect on The Ncw Zealand law left the parties to 
strikes. fight it out if neither of them cared to go 

into court, but they have generally preferred to go 
into court. Yet since the problematic law went into 
force in 1895, there has been among the men subject 
to it (the public railroad employees in the strike of 
1903 were not), no labor disturbance which an Ameri- 
can would dignify by the name of a strike. But Dr. Clark 
tells us that 

'' Even before the New Zealand act was passed, the relations 
of employers and employees in that colony were normally so 
harmonious that it is difficult to show positively that the 
industrial peace at present prevailing is due to legislation. In 
New South Wales and Western Australia strikes of some con- 
sequence have occurred in defiance of the court." 

read of "^^^ ^^ kindred laws were enacted in other 
the courts and un- statcs of the federation, and finally in 
expected activity. ^^^^ ^ general law for the whole federa- 
tion, they have been obliged to go into court, but their 
doing so has seldom been with any reluctance. This is 
not the place to recount the differences in these Acts 
and their results. We have room only for such details 
as characterize at least the majority of them. 

The Conciliation Boards in existence when the Act 
was formed, were not disturbed by it. Moreover, the 
court has a right to create minor boards of conciliation 



§ 2 8oi] Personal Property. 303 

and arbitration. An appeal from them to the Arbitra- 
tion Court was of course allowed. Mr. Reeves ex- 
pected them still to settle seven-tenths of the cases 
(probably relying on the coercion latent in the appeal), 
and one of the believers in the court, probably for the 
same reason, said that it would not be used once in 
twenty years. Up to 1900, instead of being restricted to 
a tenth of the cases, it had settled two-thirds of them. 
280 (h) Both sides ^^ Unexpected development was a tend- 
arranged cases to ency for employers to arrange with their 
fefei-. raen to get cases before the courts which 

would bring decisions controlling dishonest and sweat- 
ing competitors. This effect was similar to that already 
noted in the case of the Minimum Wage Boards — in fact, 
seems to be another illustration of the tendency of the 
Arbitration Courts to assume the functions — indirect 
as well as direct — of those boards. Thus men who 
wanted to cut wages in order to cut prices, have often 
been restrained. The wisdom of the court has un- 
doubtedly prevented this from being a serious damage 
to legitimate competition, yet on the other hand, its 
effect on prices has probably not invariably been for 
the good of the whole community, as already indicated 
regarding the Wages Boards, and as will farther appear 
later. 

The courts provide rates "for superior, average and 
inferior men. No one can be employed for less than 
the average, except, as has been already explained, men 
not competent to earn the average, and the rate paid 
them must, if questioned, be sanctioned by the local 
Board of Conciliation". 

The success of such an arrangement, should it con- 
tinue, would seem to illustrate how a law that cer- 
tainly never would, and hardly could, be voluntarily 
obeyed in spirit by those upon whom it is enjoined, 
can be helped into a working condition by a court 
well adapted to the requirements of the situation. 
280 (i) Courts Experience has abundantly shown that 

tried to follow all the successful minimum-wage fixing 
the market. must at bcst tesolvc itsclf iuto a declara- 



304 The Protection of Rights. [§ 280^ 

tion, by an honest and painstaking authority, of what 
conditions point to as the natural rate of wages, and 
this certainly is a great deal better than a determina- 
tion of them by boycott, arson and murder. Mr. Lloyd 
quoted an anonymous commentator to the effect: 

" Compulsory arbitration does not attempt any interference 
with the 'law of the market'. On the contrary, it gives the 
'law of the market ' for the first time a full chance to work. It 
brings the 'law of the market' into full and free discussion. 

" 'Fixing by law' is an odious phrase. How about fixing 
prices by the fiat of a corporation or a capitalist, or by bayonets, 
or by starvation or intimidation? Here, 'law' means debate: 
the lack of it means destruction for the men. The law does not 
dictate or fix wages, but merely decides in a dispute between 
two different views of what wages should be. 'Law' fixes 
creditors' shares in bankruptcy, lowers Irish and Scotch rents, 
fixes the price of ferries, railroads, the salaries of state officials, 
rate of taxation." 

280 07. Court's As already said, the first court, in New 
power of initiative. Zealand, could be put in motion only by 
one of the parties to a controversy. But the present 
usage empowers a court to take up, of its own motion, 
any apparent industrial abuse. But even under tlie 
primitive practice, Mr. Lloyd was hopeful enough (He 
has often been accused of being too hopeful) to say : 

" Trusts like those now coming into favor in England, such 
as that of the bedstead-makers of Birmingham, in which the 
masters and the men have united to fleece the public, would 
not be very promisijQg subjects for compulsory arbitration." 

He continues : 

280 (l<). Question " Another objection often made is, that in 
of overcrowding. consequence of the law, industry is disturbed 
by the frequency of disputes ; but when I looked into the number 
of cases before the court, I found that there had only been about 
fifty in five years, about one case a month. . . . This, too, it is 
only fair to remember, is the number of disputes at the beginning 
of the administration of the law. Every decision that settles 
questions makes precedents that will prevent other disputes 
from being brought forward." 

This is one of Mr. Lloyd's optimisms. In the half- 
dozen years since he wrote, things have moved fast, 



§ 28i] Personal Property. 305 

and, as will be shown, experience has not altogether 
continued the rosy look which the experiments bore 
nearer their dawn. But while unanticipated difficulties 
and abatements have arisen, enough success to justify 
the experiment still seems possible. But there is 
abundant evidence that the courts have been some- 
times overcrowded, and that too by questions so trivial 
that they have sometimes refused to consider them. 
He himself quotes a "labor member" of one of the 
boards to the effect: 

"Agitators foment disturbances to bring the masters before 
the court. It is suspected sometimes that even members 
of the Conciliation Board, who are paid for the number of days 
they sit, do the same thing. But which is worse, that agitators 
should foment arbitration, or foment strikes?" 

The effect of compulsory arbitration has been pecul- 
iarly happy on the condition of women workers. Even 
if Mr. Llo3^d's psean in his chapter "A New Song of 
the Shirt" was pitched some notes too high, there is 
no doubt that a paean is justified. 

281. Aspects in ^^e following passages throw much 

1890' light on the case, or at least on one side 

of it, as it looked about 1890. 

"The subject came up one day in a group at the club in 
Wellington. One of the critics of the law quoted triumphantly 
from a letter of Lord Thring's: 'Is it conceivable that at the 
close of the nineteenth century either masters or men would 
submit to such a tyrannical judicial interference with their 
liberty?' 

" 'For five years', replied one of the New Zealanders, 'masters 
and men have been submitting. They may not be satisfied. 
Where anywhere are there satisfied capitalists or laborers? 
Where is there an employer who would' not like to pay less, 
where the workingman who would not like to get more? But 
they are all at work, though not satisfied. In New Zealand 
it is proved that the Arbitration Court can make decisions 
which both sides would rather accept than to quit, as they 
always have the right to do '." 

And now a word on one of the excesses of theory 
which the Arbitration Courts have stimulated. Mr. 
Lloyd stated it in perfect good faith, as follows: 



3o6 The Protection of Rights. [^2^2 

" The New Zealand court has but just touched 

282. A theory of ^^ j^g decisions on the most important principle 
wages an pr . ^^ issue in the regulation of wages — whether 
wages must follow prices or prices wages. Must wages be 
dependent on prices necessary to market commodities, or must 
these prices be dependent on the wages necessary to maintain 
the people in decent comfort ? 

" The workingman's mind is evidently moving to the latter 
position. Several of the greatest strikes of recent years, like 
the English coal strike of 1893, ^-^^ the strike in Lord Penrhyn's 
quarries, have had the 'living wage' for their inspiring principle, 
and this new position of the workingmen in those strikes 
received the open support of some of the most influential mem- 
bers of Parliament, newspapers, and even capitalists of Great 
Britain. 

' ' This doctrine seeks to make true the fiction of John Stuart 
Mill that wages are determined by the standard of living among 
the workingmen. What John Stuart Mill said was the law of 
wages, the workingmen are seeking to bring about. The New 
Zealand law, the moment that this new political economy that 
prices must follow wages invades the bench, can be made a 
powerful instrument in reinforcing the workingmen." 

This is no more or less than one of the raise-yourself- 
by-your-bootstraps notions of which we see so many: 
somebody has got to pay those wages, and nobody has 
an unlimited store to pay them with. 

Some of Mr. Lloyd's final conclusions in 1890 are 
worth quoting, partly as bases for comparison with 
later writers. 

' ' There is only one Compulsory Arbitration law 

283. Mr. Ll9yd's ^^ ^]^g world, and that has been in operation only 
conclusions in lyuu. . ' -, . • i j_ j j. j 

four years and m an isolated country, and we 

must not generalize too freely. Similar laws might operate 
differently in different countries. . . . 

" Strikes and lockouts have been stopped. 

' " Wages and terms have been fixed so that manufacturers 
can make their contracts ahead without fear of disturbance. 

" Workingmen, too, knowing that their income cannot be cut 
down nor locked out, can marry, buy land, build homes. 

" Disputes arise continually, new terms are fixed, but in- 
dustry goes on without interruption. 

" The country is more prosperous than ever. 

" Compulsion in the background makes conciliation easier. 

" Compulsory publicity gives the public, the real arbitrator, 
all the facts of every dispute. 

" Peaceable settlement with their men has been made possible 






§ 285] Personal Property. 307 

for the majorities of the employers who wanted to arbitrate, 
but were prevented by minorities of their associates. 

'' Humane and law-abiding business men seek the protection 
of the law to save themselves from destruction by the competi- 
tion of inhumane and law-breaking rivals, 

" The victory is given as nearly as possible to the right instead 
of to the strong, as in war. 

" If the American people have any lessons to learn from these 
experiences of New Zealand, they can be trusted to learn them. 
The object of the writer has not been to enforce his views, 
but to present the facts of an interesting social experiment, on 
which the public could, if it chose, build views of its own. 

"Of course, 'our circumstances are different'. Our circum- 
stances have not been so different but that they have developed 
the same evils. Perhaps they may develop the same remedy. 

" And as for the isolation, that is a fortunate incident for the 
weak, but the United States has a nobler kind of isolation in 
its might and wealth. It can stand alone for any cause it 
chooses to espouse." 

At this point we turn more definitely to 
^nmf: ^''''' ^^- Reeves,* the father of the New Zea- 
land Arbitration Act, whom future ages 
may perhaps give a high place among the contributors 
to the welfare of mankind. His attractively written, 
instructive and interesting book of course is from his 
point of view, but it seems to be admirably candid. It 
appeared some three years later than Mr. Lloyd's, when 
Mr. Reeves's revolutionary Act of 1894 had been work- 
ing eight years, and had become the parent of others. 
285. Claims con- He tells US that from 1895 "to 1900 under 
tinued success. the Act, factory hands in New Zealand in- 
creased from 30,000 to 49,000, and export trade grew 
from 1894 to 1901 nearly 50%; factories from 1896 to 
1 90 1 nearly 30%, and total wages paid nearly 60% 
(which seems to indicate an advance of nearly 20% 
in the rate of wages), and manufacturing output grew 
in the same time about 80%. 

There had been but half a dozen strikes up to 1903. 
Half of these were among government employees, who 
did not come under the authority of the court, and 
nearly all were settled by voluntary appeal to the court. 

* Reeves, William Pember: State Experiments in Australia 
and New Zealand, 2 vols. 



3o8 The Protection of Rights. [§285 

In 1900, when propositions to thoroughly revise the 
act were before the legislature, only one man spoke un- 
favorably of it. 

286. Judge Back- I^ iQoi New South Wales was medita- 
hous'e's testimony, ting a similar act, and sent Judge Back- 
house, a cool, able and experienced man, to investigate 
the working of the court in New Zealand (1,200 miles 
off, over seas). His conclusions were: 

" The Act has prevented strikes of any magnitude, and has, 
on the whole, brought about a better relation between employers 
and employees than would exist if there were no Act. It has 
enabled the increase of wages and the other conditions favorable 
to the workmen which, under the circumstances of the colony, 
they are entitled to, to be settled without that friction and 
bitterness of feeling which otherwise might have existed; it 
has enabled employers, for a time at least, to know with cer- 
tainty the conditions of production, and therefore to make 
contracts with the knowledge that they would be able to fulfil 
them ; and indirectly it has tended to a more harmonious feeling 
among the people generally, which must have worked for the 
weal of the colony. A very large majority of the employers of 
labor whom I interviewed are in favor of the principle of 
the Act. One only did I meet who said out and out, 'I would 
rather repeal it and have a straight stand-up fight', while 
another was doubtful whether the present condition was better 
than the pre-existing. The first, in a letter, has since con- 
siderably modified his statement." 

Mr. Reeves thinks this "too roseate a view of the 
feelings of employers." 

In 1 901, Judge Backhouse's report was followed by 
a Compulsory Arbitration Act in New South Wales; 
one was passed in Western Australia in 1902, and one 
for the whole federation in 1904. 

These Acts differ much in detail, which of course 
cannot be entered into here, but they are a necessary 
and far from unattractive study for any one wishing to 
promote the substitution, anywhere, of law for war. 

287. The courts to The New South Wales Act does not 
keep the peace. make it necessary for either party to a 
quarrel voluntarily to go to court before the court can 
act: the registrar may call the parties into court, and 
this on the grounds as stated by Mr. Wise, the framer of 



§ 289] Personal Property. 309 

the Act, that "combatants who are bringing an industry 
to a dead stop should be regarded as brawlers in a street 
who check traffic with their quarreling : they should be 
made to move on." 
Mr. Reeves says: 

288. Details by "It will be urged, doubtless, that until some 

Mr. Reeves. body of men has doggedly, or perhaps violently, 

refused to obey a compulsory award and been forced to the 
knees by legal process, the strength of the Act will not have 
been thoroughly tested. Might it not, however, be urged that 
the true strength of the Act is being shown by the absence of 
such incident? Does not the growth of a habit of peaceful 
acceptance of decisions hold out the best hope of ultimate 
success for the system? 

" Passing from objections, it is safe to say that the experiment 
seems on the way to prove several useful points. First, it shows 
that trade-unionists may be persuaded by the logic of experience 
to prefer arbitration to conflict , and that their unions may grow 
and prosper in consequence. Next, that the compulsory deci- 
sions of a state tribunal may be quite as just and moderate 
as those of a private conciliation board, and that obedience to 
them need not mean ruin to an employer, or cruel hardship 
to work-people. Next, the working of the Act has not strangled 
industry or fettered enterprise ; trade and business have steadily 
improved under it. Lastly, instead of it being found impossible 
to assert the Arbitration Court's authority, there is no serious 
difficulty in enforcing its decisions; indeed, the enforcement of 
awards, which is assumed by English a priori critics to be out of 
the question, has, so far, been found in practice to be by no 
means the most troublesome part of the work of industrial 
arbitration." 

In 1903, Mr. Reeves left the laws in the following 
condition : 

" Though not yet twelve months old, Mr. Wise's Act has already 
ceased to be the newest arbitration law in the colonies. The 
West Australians, finding their Act of 1900 defective, decided 
not to amend but to repeal it. Accordingly, in February 1902, 
they displaced it with a new enactment which followed more 
closely the New Zealand model. It is noteworthy that, despite 
the example of New South Wales, this statute makes provision 
for boards of conciliation." 

289 Dr CI rk in Next, in 1906, Dr. Clark * takes up the 
1906 not quite so narrative. He wrote when the courts 
optimistic, were of course much more developed, 

* Op. cit. 



3IO The Protection of Rights. [§289 

and I shall quote from him farther details of their 
constitution and working in their developed shape, 
as well as the latest results, which are not in all 
respects quite what the earlier writers counted on. 
As the brief quotations cannot do justice to his fuller 
exposition, I shall emphasize an occasional point by 
italics not his. The reader's patience is invoked for 
some repetitions arising mainly from comparisons with 
earlier conditions, and from the increased number and 
variety of the courts. 

As now constituted, the Arbitration Courts have all 

„^„ „ ^ the powers of ordinary courts, and their 

290. Courts now ^ . -■: ^ t, • ^ x 1 1 
have legislative decisions are not subject to appeal unless 

P^^^""' their interpretation of the act creating 

them is in question. They have also legislative power: 

"The general intent of the law is to give the court power 
to settle every point that might cause a strike or lockout. 
[The government employees were not subject to compulsory 
arbitration, and] a strike, in 1903, tied up the transportation 
of Victoria. This disturbance was accompanied by incidents 
that would have rendered the strikers liable to penal punishment 
in America, and would have been discountenanced by our 
trade-unions. Trains were deserted by their crews wherever 
they chanced to be when the strike began, stranding passen- 
gers and perishable merchandise in out-of-the-way places, and 
endangering life and property. The public answered this 
challenge to its authority by a strike law more 

291. Laws against (^j-^stic than any legislation ventured by Ameri- 
^ '^' ^^' cans in the most acute crises of their civil war. 
This law imposed a penalty of nearly five hundred dollars or 
twelve months' imprisonment for engaging in a strike on govern- 
ment railways, and made men liable to arrest without warrant 
or bail for advising a strike orally or by publication, or for col- 
lecting funds for the support of strikers, or for attending any 
meeting of more than six persons for the purpose of encourag- 
ing strikers. 

"Arbitration acts derive their authority from the police 
powers of government. They are measures to prevent industrial 
disorder. . . . 

" The New Zealand law prohibits . . . strikes and lock- 
outs . . . while proceedings relating to the dispute are pending, 
and for a sufficient time beforehand to allow either party to be- 
gin proceedings if he so desires. . ._ . The new federal Act pro- 
hibits strikes and lockouts unconditionally, without regard to 
whether they are begun prior or subsequent to giving an award. 



§ 295] Personal Property. 311 

"The [New Zealand] law prohibits strikes and 
^^u'u'i"'"'"^"* '^^ lockouts among workers and employers in 
fheti'c strikes"''^^' ^'^^^^^^ industries. Parliament has defined all 
building trades as- related industries. The court 
may extend this provision to other groups of employments. 
Consequently if an award has been given in the bricklaying trade, 
for instance, the mortar-mixers or the hod-carriers cannot tie 
up that trade by a strike, although unwilling to lay their case 
before the court. 

"A second contingency bringing parties in- 
^^"^'^ L'"!r'^^^ ■ voluntarily under the act, is where an award 

adioinL distr"ifts'" ^^^ ^""^"^ ^^^^"^ ^^ ^^^^^ industry limited to 
•■ ^ ' some other portion of the colony. The employers 

or workers subject to the award might be injured in such in- 
stances by the competition of employers or workers in the dis- 
tricts not subject to its provisions. If so, they may have the 
award extended to establishments in the competing district. 
The purpose of this extension is not to prevent strikes, but in 
equalizing competition they are incidentally prohibited." 

This provision has been abused by starting a strike 
in one jurisdiction where a certain decision may be 
expected, in order to make the decision effective in 
an adjoining jurisdiction where it probably could not 
be obtained. 

294, Awards ^s was to be expected, the stringent 
evaded. control of the Arbitration Courts is often 
and easily evaded. Dr. Clark gives an illustration: 

"A service may be embodied in a commodity, and trans- 
ferred as an element or quality of a material object. To illus- 
trate concretely, an arbitration court may fix a day rate to be 
paid to saddlers, and a piece-work rate for every operation of 
making a saddle; but its jurisdiction does not extend to regu- 
lating the sale of the leather, saddle-tree, and other materials 
out of which a saddle is manufactured, or to the sale of a com- 
pleted saddle. Therefore, a manufacturer may sell these ma- 
terials to a workman, and the latter may sell the finished 
product to the manufacturer at a higher price than the materials 
cost, but at a lower price than the cost of making prescribed 
by the court plus the cost of the materials." 

Regarding the immediate effects of the decisions, he 
says: 

"It is impossible to give an arbitration court 

295. Hard to fit g^ course in technology with each new set of 

proceedings. . . . The court's decisions seldom 



312 The Protection of Rights. [§295 

adapt themselves perfectly to working conditions, and continue 
to be a chafing shoe upon the feet of industry. 

"A dispute before a court is less serious than a strike. . . •. 
But these suits occasion expense and loss of 

296. Danger of time, and check industry so far as they render 
over-regulation. uncertain future conditions of production. There 
are single employers in Australia who work under as .many as 
seven awards. The total effect of having these disputes con- 
stantly at issue — and they may await decision a year or more — • 
resembles that of an agitation for tariff revision in the United 
States. 

'Litigation is multiplied, because workmen will bring a case 
before the court where they would not risk a strike. So great 
is this evil that the court in New South Wales has recently 
adopted the policy of giving artificially created disputes no 
standing in fact. It has been proposed to require the consent 
of a large number of workers to start a dispute. But these 
are palliatives, not remedies. . . . 

297. Promotes cen- "Uniform conditions of employment favor 
tailization of either the big or the little proprietor more than 
industry. his competitor. . . . Large merchants and man- 
ufacturers are said to have entered into collusive agreements 
with their employees to secure orders from the court detrimental 
to their smaller competitors. . . . Consequently, an economic 
tendency of industrial regulation is to centralize industry." 

The very result that all the fierce agitation against 
trusts in the United States is seeking to overthrow! 

To this significant objection from the worker's 
side, Dr. Clark adds: 

"As the average workers are in a majority and 

298. And uniform- control the unions, . . . their influence alone 
ity of wages. shapes the policy of the arbitration authorities 

from the side of the workingmen. This influence 
secures conditions of employment that discount exceptional 
ability, and deaden the enterprise of more ambitious workers. . . . 
The value of their potential excess of service is thus lost to them- 
selves and the community. . . . [The court] cannot reverse the 
laws of gravity and enable the working people to raise them- 
selves by their bootstraps to a higher economic plane. Its 
orders must conform to economic law, or be speedily rendered 
ineffective by contact with stubborn facts. Consequently, awards 
ultimately become mere formal statements of average condi- 
tions of employment." 

299. But so mini- ^^ other words, the courts and Minimum 
mizes oppression. Wage Boards have wrought all these evils, 



§ 3oi] Personal Property, 313 

and their decisions might appear to the superficial to 
amount to nothing after all. But that would be really 
a superficial view: for it is by disturbing "average 
conditions of employment" — which means the average 
flow of supply and demand — that injustice is wrought. 
If a court can conserve average conditions, it accom- 
plishes a great deal. 

"The chief economic benefit workers derive from them [the 
courts] is that they render conditions of production sufficiently 
uniform in different establishments to keep unfair employers 
from obtaining a competitive advantage by oppressing their 
employees. Although the court's influence upon the average 
economic condition of the working people may be unimportant, 
it can effectively prevent unwholesome inequalities in their 
condition. . . ." 

Now he comes to the fundamental difficulty in all 
arbitration (268) : 

"An arbitration law does not, however, rest 

300. Only one side equally upon employers and employees, be- 
can pay damages, cause the former are held to its strict observ- 
ance by their financial responsibility, while 

workers can evade many of its provisions. In minor matters, 
the sanction behind the court's orders, so far as it applies to 
workmen, will always remain to a large extent a moral one. 

"But possibly this appeal to the honor and 

301. But moral civic responsibility of the worker is a more 
effective ° adequate influence in favor of industrial peace 

than harsher measures. These laws do appear — 
in spite of the occasional defiance of their orders — to increase 
the law-abiding spirit. The public opinion of workingmen sup- 
ports their observance as a matter of principle. Whether the 
strike as an instrument for enforcing labor demands falls into 
absolute disuse or not, this spirit is a social gain." 

And he repeats that the courts have diminished 
strikes and sweating (despite a somewhat inconsistent 
showing made earlier [276 e]) and child and female labor, 
and hours of work — the first two certainly a direct gain, 
the last two, results that attend the progress of civiliza- 
tion everywhere. 

The effect of the Minimum Wage Boards on prices 
(276 g) is continued by the Arbitration Courts, and 
more schemes in palliation or offset are arising. 



314 The Protection of Rights. [§302 

302. Continued "But in time the people who are not em- 

high prices and ployers or wage-earners, especiahy the rural 
palliatives. population, may resent paying high prices for 

services and commodities, in order that employers and employees 
may enjoy state-protected privileges. A popular demand may 
then arise for more regulation, for some method to protect 
the rights of the consuming public — the farmer, the professional 
man, and the person of small property. This might manifest 
itself first in laws to control prices, already suggested [and 
commented upon (276/1)], or for the state housing of citizens — 
Gently inaugurated as a remedy for conditions caused in part 
by arbitration awards in New Zealand — or for the erection 
of state industrial establishments to compete with those reaping 
a large profit under tariff protection and award control." 

The Paris workshops again! tho, it must be ad- 
mitted, with side issues — state housing and state 
competition with monopolies, which have aroused the 
enthusiasm of many people who rejoice in old expe- 
dients with new faces — especially when they do not 
know them to be old. 

Elsewhere Dr. Clark says: 

' * No error could be more pernicious than to assume that 
these laws have fully justified themselves by economic and 
social results. . . . The coming story of the labor party will 
be a record of failure as well as success. . , , Nevertheless it has 
won to its main proposals the support of all political parties, and 
of the great mass of the people. None of the parties now opposes 
compulsory arbitration or old-age pensions. ..." 

Perhaps it would have been wiser to say, instead 
of "now opposes", yet opposes. For I have already 
quoted passages abundantly showing that opposition 
is brewing, tho it has not yet become strong enough 
to appear in the platforms of any party. 

And now we have reached a set of considerations 
beginning to diverge from the merely economic: 

QnQ r^M.+. „^„ "When an award is under litigation workers 

oUo. Lourts con- ^^ ^ ^i • ^ ■ 1 ° ^ , • 

sider cost of living, often support their claims by testimony as 
and profits and to house rent and the cost of staple household 
all conditions. articles. The principle of a living wage is 

therefore fully established in arbitration precedents. The 
judge usually follows the theory that such a wage is a first 



§ 3o6] Personal Property. 315 

charge upon an industry, to be imposed if the business is to 
continue in operation. . . . Dividends and other evidence of 
the earning power of a business are admitted as having a bearing 
upon an equitable wage for einployees. The court thus fixes 
the share of the profits of an industry which the worker shall 
enjoy. . . . The court has considered such questions as the 
speed at which machines are to be run, the number of men to 
be employed to a machine, and whether men working in the 
open air, or their employer, shall decide when it is too wet to 
labor. 

304. Startling dec- "The chief justice of New South Wales said 
laration of court's of the act : ' It deprives the employer of the conduct 
powers, of his own business, and vests the management in 
the tribunal formed under the Act.' " 

The laws of two of the states 

305. Supports the " expressly state that the court shall have power 
closed shop — con- to give unionists preference of employment, 
ditionally, though this is not mandatory. In Western 
Australia a similar clause was defeated by the protracted oppo- 
sition of the upper house of Parliament. In the federal law 
the power is granted conditionally, but it is required that the 
union shall not engage in political activity while enjoying 
preference, and that this privilege shall be given only when, 
in the opinion of the court, a majority of the workers in the 
occupation regulated by the award approve of the claim for 
preference. The court in New Zealand has established its 
right to prescribe that non-unionist workmen already em- 
ployed when the award goes into operation shall join the union 
as a condition of retaining their positions. On the other hand, 
the court usually provides that the union shall have preference 
only so long as it admits any applicant of good character to 
membership, upon payment of moderate fees fixed by the 
court. . . . The stronger organizations had enforced the closed 
shop in Australasia before the court was established, and 
refuse to relinquish what they consider a vested right. They 
further claim the privilege of raising the issue in court, because 
it is a recognized issue in strikes. The men also assert that 
preference is just, because only unionists incur the expense, 
and the odium with employers, of securing awards, and are 
liable to penalties for breaking the awards. 

" The most important objection to granting 
c 1 d cT^sT is- prcference to unionists arises from the organic 
lation by courts? connection between the unions and the political 
labor party. Preference to unionists is prefer- 
ence of employment to members of a political organization." 

After learning all this, it is startling to find that 



3i6 The Protection of Rights. [§ 306 

" The proportion of the whole population in such unions 
varies from a trifle over three per cent, in New Zealand to 
nearly seven per cent, in Western Australia." 

And does not all the foregoing mean class legislation ? 
Dr. Clark seems to think it does: 

"So at present the government orders business to be con- 
ducted according to the demands of particular classes. The 
interests of classes rather than of the public are consulted. 

"American judges hold that the legislature cannot make 
laws affecting the interest of a particular class — set apart from 
the whole body of citizens. These decisions have prevented 
laws in favor of or against members of trade-unions, and might 
apply to prevent compulsory preference of employment even 
to members of a quasi-public society like an industrial union." 

The Arbitration Courts have, as already said, many- 
legislative privileges : 

"As a lawmaker, the court is the mark of virulent and par- 
tisan criticism, and its orders are subject to the same public 
comment and discussion as other legislative or administrative 
acts, while in its purely judicial capacity it receives the respect 
usually shown to a dispenser of justice. ... In an important 
mining case ... a newspaper commented editorially upon the 
merits of the issues involved. The paper was warned that it 
rendered itself liable to punishment. . . . The 
freedom of the press, f^^^edom of the press is thus curtailed by ap- 
plying to a legislative body protective canons 
of law devised to procure uninfluenced and unimpeded channels 
for the administration of justice. 

" However, in response to practical considerations, arbitration 
laws are evolving toward a separation of judicial and legislative 
powers. . . . Breaches of awards are prosecuted under an 
action of mixed civil and criminal character, and the defendant, 
if convicted, is adjudged to pay costs, and an additional sum 
partaking of the nature both of a fine and of an award of 
damages. Such a 'penalty' is made payable directly to the 
plaintiff." 

Dr. Clark, it is very important to realize, has shown 
that the effective administration of the law seems to 
require proceedings that attack what have heretofore 
been considered the foundations of civilization, and that, 
like the attempts to secure equal fortune to unequal 
men, give an impression that to justify such risks, 



§ 309] Personal Property. 317 

the advantages of compulsory arbitration need to be 
almost incalculably great. Dr. Clark next gives still 
m.ore startling testimony to the same effect: 

308. And "the " Wherever compulsory arbitration is in force, 

obligation of the court finds it necessary to annul or modify 

contracts . existing contracts of service, against the will of 

the parties, tho these contracts are not in then^iselves illegal. 

' ' An industrial agreement is a contract approved and sanc- 
tioned by the court, and might therefore be supposed to enjoy 
special immunit}^ from alteration. In Western Australia the 
court has held that it cannot modify an industrial agreement 
without the consent of all the signatory parties. But elsewhere 
the court has amended these contracts, or substituted awards in 
place of them. . . ," 

All this would not be tolerated under the Constitution 
of the United States, which does not permit any state 
legislature even, not to speak of any court, to pass 
a law annulling the obligation of contracts. 

"Tho a legislature might declare certain classes of contracts 
in the future illegal, no law could be made so sweeping as to 
deprive all citizens of the right of making individual contracts 
of service, without causing a revolution in our [American] sys- 
tem of jurisprudence that would encounter the veto of the 
higher courts." 

But Dr. Clark has more to say: 

" Compulsory arbitration and private contract are in the 
widest sense contradictory. Their mutual opposition continu- 
ally creates new problems for legislators. . . . These laws revive 
the old historical struggle between contract and status. They 
reverse the process of evolution of private rights in European 
and British law.'' 

Does this mean simply a relapse toward barbarism ? 
The reader new to the question is advised to read again 
Chapter XIII before continuing. 

The attacks on Freedom of the Press and Freedom 
of Contract, are accompanied by another attack on what 
have been supposed to be the bulwarks of liberty: 

" Rival unions have occasioned some of the 
of assemblv '^' ij^ost bitterly contested issues under the arbi- 
tration laws. The bogus union, formed by a 



3i8 The Protection of Rights. [§3^9 

small group of employees disaffected with the existing organi- 
zation, with the connivance of employers, and used to defeat 
or hamper the operation of the law, has been the subject of 
parliamentary investigations in New South Wales. Therefore 
the state is forced, in its increasing control over labor societies, 
even to limit the right of free association among workingmen. 
, . , The total effect is to make the condition of status more 
rigid." 

Next we come to something perhaps more startHng 
still: 

" The Australasian legislator has not been restricted in 
enacting arbitration laws by constitutional limitations such as 
exist in the United States. ... In most [of those] states no 
power exists to create a tribunal with the right, 
310; And trial without a trial by jury, to punish misdemeanors, 

^ J"''^' impose a fine of nearly five thousand dollars, 

or even as a last resort to imprison offenders." 

Is this Good-bye to trial by jury? Australia is pro- 
gressive. But the experiment is new, and conditions 
are difhcult. 

311. Attacks on But Australasians did not know where 
i^'e'diSted".' "'"" they were going. 

" The colonies did not enter on this legislation with clear 
foresight and purpose. The form and effect of these experi- 
mental statutes were not pondered with the care devoted to a 
revolutionary programme. The proposer of the New Zealand 
law stated in the debates upon the bill, that a vast majority 
of the disputes coming before the authorities would be settled 
by conciliation, without recourse to the court. The function 
of the latter body was not regarded as legislative, but as purely 
judicial — or rather as also conciliatory. The purpose of the 
law was to bring men to a voluntary agreement. It was to 
further, not to annul, the principle of private contract. . . . 
The development of this legislation, however, has been in 
another direction. . . . 

" Workingmen have applied for nearly all the 

312. New conditions, awards granted in New Zealand and Australia, 
unexpected results. ^^^^.^ demands, when they file an application 
before the court, are not guided by past conditions. . . . 
Therefore the court is obliged to make orders covering many 
points for which no precedents exist. . . . Statutory or custom- 
ary law is not at hand to guide its decisions, and so must be 



§314] Personal Property. 319 

enacted. But a new bod}^ of legislation . . . requires constant 
amendment to correct the contradictions and omissions that 
reveal themselves in practice. The legislative activity of the 
court is consequently stimulated from two directions, by the 
increasing demands of workers for better terms of employment, 
and by appeals from both parties to have conditions previously 
imposed made more workable. 

" The divergence between the original theory and purpose 
of industrial arbitration, and its present development, is over- 
looked or disregarded. The final effect of this new institution 
upon private law and theories of government is not considered, 
because the popular attitude toward this legislation is oppor- 
313 Yet all tunist and practical. But the labor party, 

admitted to be winch is the most active supporter of industrial 

progress toward arbitration, fancies that it is a step toward state 
socialism. socialism." 

314. Has experi- And these steps toward state socialism 
ciailsm'^at'wa?"" ^^^ °^^^ what a labor agitator in other 
witli Liberty and connections would be apt to call "the 
Progress? prostrate bodies" of trial by jury, of free- 

dom of the press, of right of assembly, and of contract; 
and are of course steps back toward status! The conten- 
tion that state socialism and status are synonymous 
terms, seems receiving a startling confirmation from 
experience, even before state socialism has become mat- 
ter of experience. 

After I first read, as a whole, the foregoing con- 
densation from Dr. Clark's book, I wrote to him that 
I did not before know what a terrible indictment of 
government control of industry the book contains. 
That the extracts turned out an indictment was due, 
however, to no will of mine. I tried to be as fair to 
both sides as he is. 

Either the indictment is terrible, or the experience of 
thrice ten centuries through the whole world, has been 
shown to be foolishness, by ten years of experiment on 
three islands in the Pacific. And this remains true, 
even if the right of trial by jury is, as many sober 
thinkers suspect, outgrown in a fairly democratic state; 
and even if contract, like many other invaluable insti- 
tutions, is capable, in abnormal conditions, of working 
injustice. But surely its abnormal conditions should 



320 The Protection of Rights. [§ 314 

never be approached with a hand less cautious and 
reverent than the ideal surgeon's — or the ideal jurist's. 

These most weighty considerations show plainly that 
in Australasia the thunder is rumbling. But as yet no 
bolts have fallen; Dr. Clark says: 

315. No business " The evidence does not show a general 

disasters yet. setback from government regulation of in- 

dustries. The investment of foreign capital may have been 
checked by the novelty and uncertainty of this legislation, but 
local capital has been found to meet the demand of growing 
enterprises. The impression the country makes upon a visitor 
is not that of a land where industry is paralyzed and business 
stagnated, but rather the reverse. Permanent and costly 
buildings are being erected in the larger cities, public improve- 
ments are going forward, the wharves are crowded with shipping, 
the railway service is fully occupied. . . . There are few 
evidences of excessive unemployment. To a person studying 
conditions in Australasia, the economic argument that a country 
will be industrially ruined by state regulation is not convincingly 
demonstrated. But this does not prove or disprove the ad- 
visability of the laws embodying these experiments: for the 
argument in question is too general to be valid. The prosperity 
or depression of a country's business rests upon a broader 
basis than an industrial arbitration act." 

Yet our author goes on to shovv^ what 
?n pros'perous^ti'mes^ ^^^ been claimed before, that state regula- 
tions have not yet been tried under ad- 
verse conditions, but have been acting only in a period 
which other causes made one of great prosperity. 

" Since the passage of the oldest of these laws, the Victorian 
Minimum Wage Act, federation has been accomplished, and a 
national tariff with free trade throughout the Commonwealth 
has been substituted for a local tariff and free trade only within 
the borders of the colony. This enlarged market has caused a 
great expansion of manufacturing. The exportation to other 
states of the federation of twenty-four classes of locally made 
articles increased over one hundred and forty-seven per cent, 
during the first two years after the national tariff went into 
effect. . . . This has stimulated the demand for factory opera- 
tives and raised wages in many skilled occupations." 

Yet one is not surprised to learn that 



i 



§319] Personal Property. 321 

317. Disagreement " The economic effects of government regula- 
as to prospects. tion of industry are still a matter of controversy 
in Australasia. . . . The contention that the capitalist is 
benefited by having wages fixed and other conditions of em- 
ployment determined by a government authority, is some- 
times supported by plausible argumients; but it is contra- 
dicted by the attitude of most employers toward these laws. 
As a body, they oppose compulsory-arbitration and minimum- 
wage boards. . . . Probably the influence — good or bad — of 
state regulation upon the prosperity and development of 
industries has been exaggerated. . . . Indeed state regulation 
applies to the industries that are the main source of national 
income only to a very limited extent." 

318. Increased ^^^ whatever may be the gains or 
fealty to Law. losses through the AustraHan labor legis- 
lation, even if the tinkering and expensive bracing it is 
already demanding, shall tinker and brace it into some- 
thing else, or out of existence, one effect of it should 
be viewed in America with special hope and honor: 
for as Dr. Clark says: 

"It is a law-abiding agency, and the forces that in other 
countries threaten to disrupt society, serve, in Australasia, only 
to strengthen social bonds." 

Yet this does seem a little difficult to reconcile with 
what he expressly asserts of class legislation ; restriction 
of freedom of the press, of assembly, and of trial by 
jury; and interference with contract. 

But the dispassionate doctor's valedictory is : 

"But if state regulation clearly fails to benefit wage-earners, 
the country will probably return to free private administration 

319. The equilib- ^^ industry. The essential fact is that the {res- 
rium unstaoie. ^rit condition is unstable." 

Knowing the policy of a set of doctors plainly not 
of his school, he adds: 

"The workers are still confident that state regulation does 
help them, and will continue to do so. Therefore the limited 
experience with compulsory arbitration up to the present, sug- 
gests the possibility of a further development toward state 
socialism." 

Like protective tariffs, and stimulants and narcotics — ■ 



322 The Protection of Rights. [§319 

when the amount in use is proved ineffective, give more! 
320. The latest ^^ these pages are about to leave my 

word. hand, there comes through a correspond- 

ent of the London Times one of those messages, ex- 
treme on one side or the other which constantly ema- 
nate from Australasia. 

As quoted by the New York Times, the correspond- 
ent makes out that 

"Neither party is really satisfied with the state of things 
in New Zealand; both parties are, in fact, extremely dis- 
satisfied. The Australian Minister for Agriculture, returning 
from a visit to New Zealand, has reported that he found the 
Arbitration Act * working to great advantage.' The Secretary 
of the New Zealand Federation of Employers tells the cor- 
respondent that the employers do not agree with this view. 
The workmen, according to this authority, are 'assailing the 
employers, threatening to ignore the Act altogether, and to 
return to their old methods; there has never been any greater 
friction in labor matters than at the present time.' From the 
employers' point of view the Act has not made for better work 
or for improved methods, and it has not fostered trade. On 
the other hand, it has seriously increased the cost of production. 
This increase has been such that in those articles which New 
Zealand might be expected to export, such as clothing, woolens, 
timber and coal, she is unable to take advantage of her natural 
facilities. 'The history of the court has been increased impor- 
tations and decreased local output.' . . . The Seamen's Union 
and the Otago Trades and Labor Council have in turn de- 
nounced the court." 

But despite frequent casual statements 
ru '^^PJ'.'",^^ like this, and despite the deep shadows 
1 eyas ai ure. ^^ ~^^^ Clark's thorough and dispassionate 
study, we are by no means forced to the conviction 
that the threatening aspects of government regulation 
must lead to its complete overthrow. The dangers are 
almost inseparable from so young an experience, and 
there seems to be no unescapable reason to fear that they 
are due to anything more than the excesses of youth, 
or that they cannot be remedied as experience accu- 
mulates. 

As shown, most of the decisions have been in favor 
of the men, because the market has been steadily rising. 
Then if the principle of compulsory arbitration shall 



§ 322 a] Personal Property. 323 

turn out to be the colossal blessing to mankind which 
its friends claim, and which its enemies seem growing 
less inclined to dispute, the fact that it ''happened" 
to be started at the beginning of many years of in- 
creasing prosperity, will be classed with such facts 
as Rome's unification of the civilized world when 
Christianity appeared — facts which, whether called 
"Providential" or by any other name, even the phi- 
losopher is tempted to accept as proofs of an order and 
beneficence in the universe wider than our everyday 
conceptions are apt to rise to. 

322. Gains in pros- What is to be the effect of compulsory 
perity may carry arbitration on a falling market, yet re- 
through adversity. Plains to be ascertained. But the work- 
men have already had the discipline of eleven law- 
seeking and law-abiding years, to educate them to 
respect the law when it goes against them. 

Of course the enthusiasts are tempted, in face of 
abundant other obvious causes for Australasia's prog- 
ress during the last decade, to attribute it too largely 
to compulsory arbitration; but it would be a blind 
opponent indeed who would give that no place what- 
ever among the favoring agencies. 

Laborers everywhere of course expect that every new 
expedient is going to give them much more wealth than 
they produce, and they resort to each expedient to the 
absurd degree that is already troubling the Australasian 
courts. But that, tho one of the greatest of their 
troubles, seems sure to remedy itself. 

Probably nearly all the excesses are due to trying 
to make the courts do too much. But it is far from 
proved that they can do nothing. To have virtually 
abolished strikes, and made the labor world law-abiding, 
is to have done a very great deal, and a great deal 
that we in America sorely need. We have already 
indulged in a good many futilities by way of voluntary 
arbitration, and a few successes, mainly in Massa- 
chusetts. But for labor's own sake, we 
"^musiVhan^lT^^ need Something stronger. Despite the dem- 
agogues who, honestly or dishonestly, make 



324 The Protection of Rights. [§ 322 a 

their livmg by fomenting Mr. Gompers's "fight", 
strikes will not be tolerated much, longer in America. 
The intelligence of the industrial world, and the com- 
mon sense of the world in general, is but just organized 
against them. But the Citizens' Associations who pro- 
pose to have regularity in their transit and supplies, 
and freedom from riot, arson and murder; and the 
Industrial Associations who propose to have Enterprise 
regulate enterprises, are spreading at a rate beside 
which the spread of labor organizations was at snail's 
pace. Possibly the demagogues, for the sake of hold- 
ing their leadership, may fight compulsory arbitration 
until, as once in England, strikes may be abolished by 
law without arbitration to fall back upon. But apparently 
compulsory arbitration will come sooner or later: it 
is difficult not to have faith that the habit of seeking 
law, and understanding it, and abiding by it, which the 
labor world of Australasia is being trained in, will 
ultimately save its arbitration courts from such fatal 
excesses as now threaten, and make them an example 
that the rest of the world will be glad to follow as fast 
as institutions can be adapted to it. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

PERSONAL PROPERTY (CONTINUED). 

Proved Methods for Diffusing it more Evenly. 

The coolie of China, the ryot of India, 
^^S.^Pjogress in ^^le fellah of Egypt, the peasant of 
Russia, are in a condition not very 
different from that of virtually all mankind a few 
thousand years ago, and that our own ancestors had 
not got very far beyond a thousand years ago. When 
we compare them with the present population 
of Japan, civilized Europe and civilized America, 
we realize that over a large part of the world, pow- 
erful agencies have long been at work for the bet- 
terment of man's estate. A little thought must con- 
vince us too that the betterment has been greater 
among the masses of mankind than among the few 
at the head. The average man's condition is now 
nearer that of the exceptional man, who is forced to 
respect his life, liberty and property, than was the con- 
dition of the feudal retainer who held all these things 
at the mercy of his lord. In the essentials of a healthy 
existence — food, clothing, shelter, sanitary surround- 
ings, hospital facilities, education, the average man 
to-day is vastly nearer the favored man than he was 
not merely thousands of years ago, but centuries ago — 
yes, decades ago. Since the middle of the last century, 
there have rapidly accumulated figures which prove 
that even in that comparatively insignificant period, 
the progress is not, as might have been expected, corre- 
spondingly insignificant, but very significant indeed. 

325 



326 The Protection of Rights. [^3^3 

The agencies that have thus been distributing the 
good things of hfe, are of course innumerable, and the 
study of them is too recent, even could it possibly be 
adequate, to reach a very thorough knowledge of them. 
But we know some of them well enough to enable us 
to promote their efficiency. 

Before proceeding, however, to such detailed con- 
sideration as we can give them, it is well worth while 
to pay some attention to the general facts which prove 
that there are enough agencies whose efficacy has been 
proved, to render foolish all headlong confidence in the 
untried quack stimulants which are constantly suggested. 

But first let us realize that while we would like every- 
body to get rich in a generation, there is no way to 
bring it about: Nature has settled the matter in her 
own way: there is not ability to produce enough. 
The annual production of the country averages less 
than $250 apiece, and, as we have seen, the accumulated 
wealth is but about $1,200 apiece. 
.- . ^,» , „ A more general diffusion of wealth, then, 

324. Diffusion of , •, r i -i-rr • r 

wealth depends on must wait for a more general dirtusion of 
diffusion of Ability, ability to produce it. As already said, 
wealth is Nature's prize to stimulate energy, fore- 
thought, temperance and honesty — in a word. Ability. 
Yet the man without ability gains much from the 
general progress of invention, and General Walker 
seems to claim * that he gains it all except a little of 
the inventor's share ; but the doctrine is not generally 
accepted to that degree. Mr. Atkinson, however, quotes 
Bastiat with approval to the effect that "in proportion 
to the increased quantity and effectiveness of capital, 
the aggregate share of the annual joint product of labor 
and capital falling to capital, is increased absolutely, but 
diminished relatively. On the other hand, the share 
falling to labor is augmented both absolutely and rela- 
tively." The laboring man does plainly gain much: 
for his cottage to-day contains many comforts that the 
home of the rich lacked half a century ago. 

*" Political Economy", Advanced Course, §§ 326-36. 



§325] Personal Property. 327 

In 1903 the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics 
issued a bulletin showing that of 45 > 7 80 persons in the 
state who had retired from business with a competency 
for the rest of their lives, 1,076 were laborers. Yet 
the world is still divided up among a small proportion 
of rich and a large proportion of not rich. 

But the proportion is growing more 
?B' +fe^^' favorable to the poor. When we were dis- 

tena to rise. . ^ , -K ^ 1 1 1 1 m-j^ 

cussmg the relations of labor and ability 
(pp. 92-3), we took note of Galton's generalization that 
most men tend to be about average, and that the depart- 
ures from average tend to be relatively few. From this 
it is obvious that most men's incomes must be about 
the average — some $650 a year in America in 1900, 
and that those who have more, grow fewer and fewer 
as the incomes increase. Such is the condition at 
any given time, but there is a vastly wider generaliza- 
tion than Galton's, which, with the exception of that 
of evolution, is probably the most tremendous gener- 
alization yet given to the mind of man. I refer to 
Spencer's Law of Equilibration, which includes a 
corollary that under evolution, averages have a ten- 
dency to rise, and, in their progress, to include the 
individuals of the grades originally above them. Under 
this principle, if the dots in the supposed graphic 
representation suggested in the passage on page 93, 
could rise, the lower ones would, according to the law, 
rise faster than the upper ones, and the space occupied 
would continue to become narrower until in time all 
the dots would be concentrated on a line considerably 
higher than the original central horizontal line of the 
system. This new heavy line would represent all men 
having attained equality of ability, and consequently 
of fortune, and on a higher plane than any men occu- 
pied at the start. No civilization has yet been long 
enough to attain such a result, and it is vain to specu- 
late whether any civilization ever will be. But the 
evolution of each civihzation has been toward such a 
result, tho it has been reversed when the dissolution 
of the civilization set in. If, then, a nation is still 



328 The Protection of Rights. [§325 

in the process of evolution, not yet having entered 
upon that of dissolution — if, for instance, the United 
States has not, as many fear, lost the preponderance 
of capable voters which started her evolution, and has 
not come under a government of incapable ones, which 
must initiate dissolution — if the country is still progress- 
ing, it is inevitable that the lot of average people should 
be improving, and that a larger portion of the people 
should be included among the average. For at least 
the fifty or sixty 3^ears for which the statistics are of 
account, they show these conditions to have prevailed; 
and there is enough general evidence from history, to 
indicate them to have prevailed, on the whole, among 
civilized peoples, since the dark ages. 
326. Diffusion in- Not only is the whole world grow- 
creasing. j^g richer, but the wealth is becoming 

more evenly divided. The trade-unions, despite their 
frightful mistakes, have undoubtedly enabled the 
laborer to get more of the benefit of the laws of com- 
petition, as we have seen, and they are making him 
more of a thinking man — in the last decade, by making 
him a great deal more trouble to think about, but at 
the expense of being more of a discontented man. 
But discontent is a good thing, rightly used. It is the 
parent of effort. 

While "rich richer, and poor poorer" 
and 'poor nooreHMs ^^s all the authority of a proverb, the 
not true in civilized authority of a proverb is often very poor 

countri6Si j ±. ^ j i. 

authority. This one simply illustrates 
how a slick phrase takes hold of people. There is 
probably no greater error in economics, and yet 
none more generally believed. The facts are over- 
whelmingly against it. In the United States wages 
have risen an average of sixty-eight per cent, since 
i860, and. have nearly doubled since 1840. (On re-read- 
ing, I find this apparently self-contradictory, but take 
the figures at, say, 100, no, and 200, and it will be 
found more than workable.) Even as late as 1880 
the census gives the yearly average nearly $100 below 
that of 1890 — $346.91 as against $444.83. The com- 



§ 327] Personal Property. 329 

parison cannot be relied on as exact, but the correct- 
ness of its general showing is certain. 

Prices have not risen with wages. They have gone 
dov\rn some eight per cent, since i860. Leaving out 
luxuries, Professor Mayo-Smith* says that the ''por- 
tion of family expenses directly affected by the price 
of commodities was as 94.4 in 1891 compared with 100 
in 1880"; and of two hundred commodities in most 
general use, Mr. W. M. Grosvenor has computed that 
a dollar in 1885 would buy a quarter more than a dol- 
lar would buy in i860: and the Maine Bureau of In- 
dustrial Statistics reported that in 1887 a dollar would 
buy as much of the mechanic's usual food-supply as 
$1.20 would in '82, or $1.30 in '77. This was, of course, 
probably due to cheapened transportation from Western 
wheat-fields and cattle-ranches. 

In the early years of the twentieth century, for which 
statistics are not yet available, strikes have made a 
great increase in nominal wages, and a great increase in 
idleness. Both the wages and the idleness have had 
to be paid for in a consequent increase of prices, but 
this is obviously temporary. Later it will be consid- 
ered more in detail. 

The hours of labor average ten now; in i860 they 
averaged eleven; and in 1840 nearly eleven and a half. 

The proof of all these paradoxes up to 1894, is given 
in one of the most elaborate economic investigations 
ever made. It was carried on in 1892 and 1893 by a 
Committee of the Senate, whose reports of facts fill 
half a dozen large volumes. This report does not seem 
to need any backing up : for it is a mass of tables 
of carefully gathered facts; but it happens to be thor- 
oughly backed by other investigations here and in 
other countries. 

Some of the others here are that wholesale clothing 
dealers report a great increase in average size and 

* In "Statistics and Economics", to which important work 
I am indebted for several other points and facts in this chapter, 
I am glad to find some of my own previous conclusions rein- 
forced by his figures. 



330 The Protection of Rights. [§327 

quality of clothes demanded, which shows that the 
people are better fed and exercised and better off. To 
come to reports of state authorities, in Massachusetts 
from '50 to '80, agricultural wages advanced fifty-six 
per cent.; from '60 to '8^, general wages advanced 
over twenty-eight per cent., and from '60 to '85, those 
of mechanics twenty-five per cent.* In Connecticut 
from '60 to'87, men's wages advanced in the principal 
factories forty-three per cent., and women's fifty-seven, 
while their dry goods and carpets cost them more than 
a third less, but provisions about a tenth more. In 
i860, a laborer on the Erie Canal got fifteen cents a 
cubic yard for shoveling dirt; in 1889, he got fifty 
cents. From 1831 to 1880, wages of cotton-spinners in 
the United States increased eighty per cent., while the 
price of cotton cloth decreased sixty per cent., and 
the average consumption per head doubled. More- 
over, pretty much everywhere the proportion of opera- 
tives in the comparatively safe and agreeable and high- 
paid processes, has greatly advanced. 

About 1890, a Massachusetts machinist said, pub- 
licly, in speaking of the state of affairs in 1842: 

"The wages of a machinist in shop were $1 to $1.25 a day: 
one nabob of a pattern-maker received the great sum of $1.50. 
They went to work at five o'clock in the morning, and worked 
till 7 130 at night, with an hour for breakfast and three-quarters 
for dinner. It was several years before we obtained eleven 
hours a day. It has now been ten hours a day for twenty- 
five years or more, and we grumble at that, tho we get more 
than twice the wages we did forty years ago ; and we are hoping 
to get the same or higher pay for working eight hours. I know 
the condition of the machinist is better than it was when I 
first joined the guild; he has better pay, better houses, better 
education, better living. For my part, I don't want any more 
of the good old times. The present time is the best we have 
ever had, tho I hope no the best we shall ever see." (Quoted 
in Wells.) 

* Most of the facts in this and the next two paragraphs are 
taken from "Recent Economic Changes" by the late David A. 
Wells — a book that no one interested in the general welfare 
can afford to leave unread. 



§ 327] Personal Property. 331 

In Massachusetts for the period 1829-31 the pro- 
bated estates under $5,000 were 85.6 per cent, of the 
whole, in the period 1889-91 they had fallen to 69.5 
of the whole, while those over $50,000 had risen from 
13.4 per cent, of the whole to 27 per cent, of the whole. 

In Great Britain from 1840 to 1890, the number of 
estates subject to succession tax increased twice as fast 
as population, while the average amount per estate 
had not increased at all. In an article in the Royal 
Statistical Society's Journal for June, 1895, Mr. Bow- 
ley gave figures indicating that "money wages in- 
creased 40 per cent, from i860 to 1891, and considering 
the increased purchasing power of money, real wages in- 
creased 92 per cent. The eminent English authority, 
Mr. Giffen,* says that during the last half of the nine- 
teenth century (that is, beginning earlier and continu- 
ing later than Mr. Bowley's figures), the average of 
wages in England nearly doubled, while the working 
hours have decreased one-fifth. When he first stated 
this, it was so generally doubted that he repeated his 
investigations with the same result. f Mr. Mulhall 

* Giffen, Robert: Progress of the Working Classes in the 
Last Half-century. 

t Sir Lowthian Bell, Mr. George Lord and Mr. James Caird 
have given facts in support of Mr. Giffen. (Wells.) 

Mr. W. H. Mallock, after an elaborate investigation in the 
British Census reports, the details of which are given in his 
" Classes and Masses", states the following conclusions: " People 
who are in want of the bare necessities of life . , „ if, whilst 
their own poverty remains the same, the riches of other classes 
increase, do, in a certain sense, become worse off relatively, . . . 
But this unfortunate class . . . has grown less and less numer- 
ous relatively to the entire population." This class "is not in 
any sense a sign or product of our modern industrial system. 
A similar class existed before that system . . . and that system 
has relatively reduced and not increased its numbers . . . and 
the real problem ... is not how to interfere with the existing 
economic tendencies, but how . . . to bring the residuum under 
their influence." "The poor" (except those who have nothing 
at all) "are getting richer; the rich, on an average, getting 
poorer . . . and of all classes in the community, the middle 
class is growing the fastest." Since 1830 the population has 
increased "in the proportion of 27 to 35; the increase of the 



332 The Protection of Rights. [§327 

said that in England a laborer who got two hundred 
pence for a given amount of work, from 1821 to 1848, 
got two hundred and eighty-five pence for the same 
work from 1880-83, while in the later period one hun- 
dred and seventeen pence bought as much grain as one 
hundred and forty-two did in the earlier period. In 
regard to beef, the showing was still more favorable. 
This cheap food was America's gift to the mother 
country. In 181 5 there were 100,000 paupers in Lon- 
don. At the rate of increase of population in 1875, 
there should have been 300,000. There actually were 
less than 100,000. 

section in question [the middle class] was in the proportion of 
27 to 84." "The middle class has increased numerically in 
the proportion of 3 to 10; the rich class has increased only in 
the proportion of 3 to 8." 

"From 1850 to 1881 the working classes have increased by 
about 15 per cent., whilst the middle classes have increased by 
more than 300 per cent." "The incomes of those with less 
than £600 have increased on the average something like 4 
per cent., . . . while the incomes of nineteen-twentieths " of 
those who have over ;£i,ooo a year "have decreased on an 
average over 7 per cent." "Landed incomes have not in- 
creased, but decreased by 14 per cent, in England, and by 13 
per cent, in Scotland." The total income of the millionaires, 
"if divided among the population in equal shares, would 
yield each inhabitant a dividend of one shilling a month". 
"The working classes have increased in wealth far faster than 
any other class in the community." "In 1880 the income of 
the working classes was (all deductions for the increase of popu- 
lation being made) more than equal to the income of all classes 
in 1850." In 1881 there were seven thousand windowless 
cabins occupied by families in Scotland; by 1891, these had 
"almost disappeared; the one-roomed dwellings with windows 
have decreased 25 per cent.; the two-roomed dwellings have 
increased by 8 per cent., and the three-roomed and four-roomed 
dwellings by 17 per cent.". "The smaller businesses, instead 
of being crushed out, are increasing more rapidly than the 
population." ' ' There is an increase of 1 5 per cent, in the school- 
teachers; . . .of 21 per cent, in the butchers, which shows 
the general increase of meat consumption; . . . of 26 per cent, 
in the doctors; and ... of 53 per cent, in the persons who 
professionally minister to amusement." "The computed 
capital of the Post Office Savings Banks ... in ten years has 
very nearly doubled itself." 



§32 7<^] Personal Property. ^t^t, 

In France from '53 to '83 wages advanced some 
sixty per cent., and in the principal occupations of 
women (outside of domestic service), they nearly 
doubled. 

In Germany, labor statistics are not as easily within 
our reach, but income-tax statistics prove the same 
thing. In Prussia, from 1876 to 1888, Dr. Soetbeer 
(quoted by Professor Mayo-Smith) finds that the pro- 
portion of income-tax payers with their families, to 
the whole population, had increased about 22 per 
cent., that is from 2.3 per cent, of the population 
to 2.8 per cent., and that the classes which had in- 
creased at the most rapid rate were those with incomes 
of over $500. And altho the mOvSt rapid increase of all 
had been in the class with incomes of over $25,000, the 
average incomes of that class had decreased ,» thus show- 
ing both that more people were getting rich, and that 
the rich were not getting richer. 

One fact general over all highly civilized countries 
shows that the details we have been going over, must, 
on the whole, be correct. It is that the consumption 
of food has been increasing faster than population. 
This cannot mean that the rich eat and drink more: 
for they ate and drank all they wanted before; so it 
must prove that the proportion of those who can eat 
and drink freely is increasing. 

Most of the foregoing discussion of wages and prices 
was published in 1901. Almost immediately there- 
after some strange conditions began to show themselves 
in the United States and to increase until at this writing, 
in the spring of 1907, they seem to have passed their 
culmination. 

The first of them was a run-up in prices of com- 
modities, following the general inflation of industrial 
properties through trust promotions. This inflation 
327 (a). Pendulum collapscd in 1903, but cotemporaucous with 
swings backward it there had been a twofold inflation of 
wages — one resulting from the inflation of 
prices, the other from the greatest trade-union activity 
ever known. ' The unions had discovered a new panacea 



334 The Protection of Rights. [§ 327 a 

in the closely organized strike, and proceeded to apply 
it as vigorously as silver inflation or a protective tariff 
or any other panacea had ever been applied. Much 
of the advance of wages from this cause was of course 
purely nominal — it was obtained through the expensive 
idleness of the strikes, and followed by much more idle- 
ness or unemployment, because people would not or 
could not pay the scale of wages reached. But the 
country being at peace, there being no money -heresies 
in the air, the tornado impending from the tariff being 
as yet no bigger than a man's hand, the crops being 
good, and Europe wanting them; gold production being 
large; the quadrennial business disturbance of the 
presidential election being more nearly settled by a 
foregone conclusion than usual — all these influences 
made the period one of prosperity so great as to encour- 
age the prosecution of the enterprises which had been 
held up by the high prices of labor. This was espe- 
cially true of house-building, and the various forms 
of engineering construction. The accumulation of these 
undertakings has made an exceptional demand, for the 
time being, until at last most of the labor thrust into 
idleness by the new prices, has been set to work. 

When this dammed-up rush of new enterprises passes, 
and San Francisco is rebuilt, probably there will be a 
counter-revolution in wages, as, in fact, there has 
already been in some trades where there has been no 
previously dammed-up rush of activity, and, more espe- 
cially perhaps, where the employers have at last met 
organization with organization. But all these excep- 
tional disturbances may in some particulars make 
the preceding figures for the rise of wages and fall of 
prices during the preceding half century, look insig- 
nificant for the moment. Yet in considering whether 
they can still be accepted as conclusive indications 
of the advance of the general welfare, the exceptional 
and probably temporary character of the remarkable 
fluctuations of the past five years (i 901 -1906) should 
be carefully borne in mind. 

And yet in spite of them, the United States Labor 



§327^] Personal Property. 33^ 

Bureau report for 1906 shows that the average wage- 
earner is working shorter hours than ever before, that 
he is receiving more pay for the short -hour week than 
he formerly received for the long-hour week, and that 
the increase in his average wage has been so great 
that its purchasing power has risen, notwithstanding 
the increase in prices of many commodities. 

From 1894 to 1905 the average wage per hour in- 
creased 21.5 per cent., while the average hours worked 
per week decreased 3.9 per cent. The average wage- 
earner, working shorter hours, earns 12.9 per cent, more 
per week than in 1890. 

The average price of food, weighted according to 
the average family consumption in the families of 2,567 
workingmen, increased 9.8 percent, above 1890. Not- 
withstanding this increase, the average wage hour 
would purchase in 1895 8.1 per cent, more food than 
in 1890. Still more important has been the increase 
in the number employed, amounting to 42 per cent, 
over 1894 and to 40.9 per cent, over 1890. The com- 
bined effect of the increase in the average wage and 
in the number employed, was to increase the total 
amount paid in wages per week by 65.7 per cent, above 
1894 and 59.1 per cent, above 1890. 

The total cost of living shows a larger increase in the 
purchasing power of an hour's wage than is shown by 
the price of food alone, for while there has been a gen- 
eral advance in commodity prices, the average cost of 
living has not advanced in proportion to the cost of 
foods. 

Manufacturing establishments, especially the larger 
concerns, have been able to introduce economies that 
have to some degree offset the greater cost of labor 
and materials. One of the most important factors in 
moderating the advance in commodity prices gener- 
ally has been the decline in the cost of transportation — ■ 
a cost that enters into the selling price of practically 
every commodity. Th© average freight charge per 
ton per mile for 1905, as reported by the Interstate 
Commerce Commission, shows a decrease of 18.6 per 



SS^ The Protection of Rights. [§ 327 a 

cent, as compared with 1890. The figures for 1906, when 
put in shape, will show a still further reduction. 

This rapid decline in the average cost of transpor- 
tation has been made possible by the expenditure of 
hundreds of millions of dollars for the betterment of 
tracks and road-beds, the elimination of grades and 
curves, and the purchase of more powerful engines and 
larger cars. This work will continue on an unpre- 
cedented scale for some years to come if it is not inter- 
fered with by radical legislation. But the threat of it 
is already making trouble. Yet the roads in trunk-line 
territory alone planned for the expenditure of not less 
than $400,000,000 in 1906 and 1907, and all over the 
South existing lines are being improved and extended. 

Dun's tables show that the cost of living per capita 
in i860, before the civil war, was $16.87 rnore than in 
1905. For the sixteen years 1880 to 1895, inclusive, 
the average yearly cost was $101.65. For the ten years 
1896 to 1905, inclusive, the average was $81.52, $20.13 
less than for the earlier period. 

The preceding discussion has contained 
lection in^hTurs^' ^o^any Statements of the decrease of hours 
of labor, accompanied by rise in w^ages. 
It is inevitable, then, that the production per hour has 
increased. This is due to improved management, 
labor-saving machinery, and increase in the ability 
of the laborers. This latter has been both a cause and 
an effect: better wages and better conditions of living 
increase intelligence and working power. Of course a 
man working but one hour a day will produce very 
little, and a man working twenty-four hours a day 
will soon produce nothing. In what number of hours, 
day by day, will he produce most? Experience seems 
to indicate that in the general run of work, the happy 
medium is about eight. And strange to say, this seems 
to be the experience when the work is merely tending 
a machine: it will be so much better tended and kept 
in so much better order. 

The question of the eight -hour day is an exceedingly 



§ 327 &] Personal Property. 337 

interesting one, and can be studied to good advantage 
in Mr. John Rae's book "Eight Hours for Work". 
There is no space for its detailed discussion here. Only- 
Mr. Rae's general conclusions can be given. He sup- 
ports them with a great array of facts. 

Of course there is a great difference in trades. There 
are virtually none in which a reduction from the old 
working day of twelve or even fourteen hours, has not 
been attended with increased production; and of those 
trades where a farther reduction from ten hours to 
eight has been considered worth trying, the experiment 
has been successful in the vast majority of cases. 

The vigor of the operatives, their prompt attendance, 
their care and attention in their work, their care of 
their machinery, their speed in little repairs and in 
shif tings, have not only generally kept up the output, 
but in a very large proportion of cases, have actually 
increased it. 

The men have lost much less time from illness, and 
been put to much less expense for medicine, special 
diet and physicians' attendance. They have spent less 
for drink to overcome or solace their fatigue, and of 
course have suffered less from the consequences of drink. 
As a result, crime has fallen off. 

They have spent their increased leisure better than 
they did their scant leisure. Gardening, gymnastics, 
outdoor sports in their season, and reading and attend- 
ance at schools and lectures in the indoor season, have 
increased enormously; and with them of course, book 
clubs, reading-rooms and lyceums. All this has in- 
creased intelligence, which has increased production. 
It is not to be confused with the misuse of sudden 
comparative wealth, which is spoken of elsewhere. 

The old fallacy that "the profit is in the last hour" 
was suspected before the shortening of hours was tried, 
and when it was examined into, statistics proved that 
the last hour, so far from being the most profitable, 
was the hour in which occurred most of the expensive 
accidents to machinery, of the spoiling of material, 
and of the injuries to laborers, not to speak of most 



$^S The Protection of Rights. ' [§ 327 ^ 

■\ 
of the expense of lighting, and a greater proportionate 
expense of heating in the colder hours of morning and 
evening. 

Workmen have been increasingly willing to pay for 
shorter hours through a reduction of wages, but the 
rule has been that even where production fell off before 
things were adapted to the new conditions (which it 
by no means always did), as soon as the adaptations 
were effected, rising production increased wages until 
in time they have in many cases, probably in most, 
become higher than before the reduction of hours. 

Foremen and the enterprisers themselves have 
abundantly testified that — perhaps most important of 
all — ^their own efficiency and the ease and effectiveness 
of handling their men, have benefited as much as the 
efficiency of the men. 

One good result expected from the change has not 
been realized, but that very fact is a virtual demon- 
stration that the change has not diminished produc- 
tion. It was expected by many that the hours taken 
from production would have to be restored by taking 
in a corresponding number of the unemployed. Many 
computations were published which proved to the sat- 
isfaction of those who made them, that unemployment 
of the willing would virtually cease. The expectation — 
unfortunately from one standpoint — has not been 
realized; but — fortunately for the proof that reducing 
hours has not reduced production — the proportion of 
the unemployed has remained about as before. 

The skeptical reader is urged to study the facts on 
which all these generalizations rest. Mr. Rae speaks of 
a book on the subject by Mr. Sidney Webb and Mr. 
Horace Cox. I have not considered it necessary to 
consult it, as it is said, on the whole, to support Mr. Rae. 

He also quotes an opinion of Mr. Jevons that the 
reduced hours are simply a result of the increased 
prosperity of the working classes — that they work less 
time because they can afford to. This factor must 
undoubtedly enter into the case, but one reason they 
can afford to work fewer hours is that they can do 



§ 328] Personal Property. 339 

as much or more in the fewer hours, and their increased 
prosperity enters but very indirectly into their better 
care of their machinery and their own persons, and the 
improved use they make of their leisure time. 

I find a report worth mentioning, tho I am unable to 
give the authority, that among the cigarmakers 51 per 
cent, died of tuberculosis prior to the inauguration of 
the eight-hour work-day. Seventeen years after the 
eight-hour day took effect this percentage had been 
reduced to 23 per cent. 

An instance much later than those given by Mr. Rae 
has just come from the Austrian coal and lignite mines. 
In 1902, the daily working hours there were reduced 
from twelve to nine. In 1904, the average production 
per man per shift was higher than in 1901, by 6.6 per 
cent, in the coal mines, and by 9.9 per cent, in the lig- 
nite mines. 

328. Increase in ^^ may well be asked if, until the recent 

wages and, decrease brief and exceptional period in America, 

in otriBr or cgs com6 • 

largely from prices the world over not having risen, and 

Capital's share, g^jj^ wages having risen, and the laborers 
having worked less time, where the increase has come 
from. Much of it has come out of Capital's share of 
product. The census reports of 1880 to 1890 show that 
during the decade, the amount of wages paid in the 
country increased 131 per cent., while capital increased 
but 121 per cent., and value of product but 69 per cent. 
In England Sir Robert Giffen computes that from 1843 
to 1882 capital increased no per cent., and wages 145 
per cent. Fifty years ago, yes, thirty years ago, capi- 
tal in New York itself brought seven per cent., now it 
hardly brings four. In many of the Western states, it 
brought ten or fifteen, where now it brings six or seven. 
A similar reduction has taken place through the civilized 
world. This falling off of from a third to a half in 
capital's share, contributes largely to the increase in 
wages. True, the exceptional business activity in 1 904-6 
has increased the demand for capital, but this cannot be 
considered permanent : the very cause of it is increasing 



340 The Protection of Rights. [§ 328 

capital at a rate that must lower interest as soon as, 
in the rhythmic course of things, the wave of activity 
passes. 

000 Af I . Ability benefits by reduction of the 
329. and from La- . ^ ^ -^ ^ ..-'., ^ ^ . , ^ . 

bor's increased interest rate, and m it must be included 

'^ ^ ^^^' the increased ability of the laborers. Their 

increased wages have come from increased productive 
power, in ingenuity, carefulness and steadiness. The 
enterprisers have been bidding for improved labor as 
fast as labor would improve itself; and the best enter- 
prisers bid highest. Of course the less they must pay 
for the use of capital, the higher they can bid. 

But of course a great deal of the improvement is 
due to the abilitv of the enterprisers and inventors. 
Processes are greatly improved, and so are transpor- 
tation and organization. In 1890, transportation alone 
cost, per unit, in America but about a third of what 
it did even so lately as i860, and, moreover, forests and 
mines and productive arable land have been opened 
much faster than population has increased. Regarding 
the share the enterpriser gets. Professor Mayo -Smith 
thus summed up the evidence of the statistics : "There is 
scarcely any doubt that it is falling. Production on a 
large scale, enormous investments of fixed capital, and 
increased competition, compel the entrepreneur to put 
up with a smaller reward." Since 1873 "the laborer 
has conserved or improved his position by the main- 
tenance of, or even advance in, wages; the landowner 
has lost by falling rents ; interest has fallen ; and profits, 
have been reduced to a narrower margin". Later 
he says: "This progress has been due primarily to the 
abundance of capital, which, on the whole, works for 
the benefit of the laboring classes in two directions — 
by competing for labor-force and thus raising wages, 
and by cheapening products and thus making wages 
go further." 

The trade-unions have helped raise wages so far 
as they have increased the laborer's ability, and that 



§ 33o] Personal Property. 341 

is very far. But so far as they have interfered with 
the Right to Work, and encouraged the various forms 
of scamping, of course they have diminished produc- 
tion, and, inevitably, retarded the advance of wages: 
for wages have got to come out of production. 

Probably the men who get their living out of the 
unions, would insist that the unions had secured for 
Labor a large portion of product to which it was justly 
entitled, and which, before the unions, it did not get; 
and on the other hand, probably many men who have 
suffered from the unions' mistakes, would say the unions 
had wasted more than they had secured. Both ex- 
tremes would be wrong. The unions have unquestion- 
ably done something, tho the decrease of interest on 
capital, and the increase of ability in inventors, enter- 
prisers and the laborers themselves, has plainly done 
so very much that it is absurd to claim that the unions 
have done the lion's share. Moreover, when we see 
that the establishments that make most money usually 
pay the highest wages, it becomes plain that the com- 
petition of enterprisers for the best labor, must, inde- 
pendently of the unions' influence, have brought wages 
nearly, if not quite, as high as the enterprisers can 
afford to pay. 

Certainly the evidence we have been going over, 
proves that there is some better way to diffuse the 
good things of this life, than to reduce their production 
by communism, socialism or scamping. 

We saw the bad effects of scamped 
fu^s?on^of testy!"" work on the laborers themselves (228 a-c), 
tho they seldom suspect it. The dis- 
appearance of scamped work alone would make an 
enormous difference in what the wages would buy. 
Moreover, the mistakes of the unions cannot forever 
overcome the economic laws which entitle an honest 
workman to better wages than a dishonest one, just 
as an honest merchant gets better credit than a dis- 
honest one. People are occasionally much impressed 
when a dishonest man succeeds, and think dishonesty 
apt to succeed; but when an honest man succeeds, it 



342 The Protection of Rights. [§330 

is so much a matter of course that people do not notice 
it. There is much reasoning of that kind: people are 
often so much impressed by what is unusual, and so 
little impressed by what is usual, that they constantly 
overrate the frequency of the unusual, and underrate 
the frequency of the usual — the very fact that a thing 
is rare, makes them believe that it is frequent, and 
vice versa. In spite, then, of an occasional rich rascal, 
there seems reasonable ground for belief that most men 
who get rich, get rich honestly: the criminal classes are 
certainly not the rich ones. 

330 (a), which - '^^^ cheapness of goods is very much 
makes everybody's affccted by the chcapucss of getting them 

money go farther, ^^ ^^^ cOUSUmer, and that is affcctcd 

by the honesty of all dealers who handle them, as well 
as of everybody engaged in transportation — cartmen, 
railroad people and steamboat people. And strange 
as it may at first appear, the cheapness of goods is 
affected by the honesty of people who never see 
them at all. The rates at which the farmers and miners 
and manufacturers can produce, and the railroads carry, 
and the merchants exchange, are all affected by the 
cheapness with which their banking business can be 
done, and the stocks of the companies dealt in; and 
that cheapness is of course affected by the honesty of 
the bankers and stock-brokers and their employees. 
In the great business of Wall Street, in many classes of 
transactions easy to recollect, the brokers rely on each 
other's mere word for millions, and so the great expense 
of time and money for written contracts is saved. In 
banks, as a matter of fact, the signatures of checks are 
not examined very much: to examine them closely, the 
expense for officials would have to be doubled. Obvi- 
ously, then, a bank or a stock exchange could not have 
been run as cheaply as it is now, in the days of thieving 
Sparta, or even in those of Shylock; in fact, in less 
honest times, modern industries simply could not have 
been run at all: with less honesty, the enormous com- 
plexity and rapidity of modern exchange was simply 
impossible. Even outside the producing, exchanging 



§33i] Personal Property. 343 

and banking world, the cheapness of goods is affected 
by everybody's honesty: the producers, exchangers and 
bankers have got to depend on engineers and architects, 
lawyers and doctors, and if those men must be paid for 
dishonest work in addition to real work, the expense of 
it must find its way back to the commodities and 
services that everybody uses. In fact, the whole 
working world is so bound together that where any part 
of it goes wrong, all the rest has got to share the expense. 
There is still another portion of the community whose 
honesty affects the price of everything that everybody 
uses. The honesty of the government is important to us 

330 (b). especially everywhere. Every taxpayer must not 

honesty in Gouern- . ■' ^ . i- , i r n ^/- • i 

ment, Only pay nis own direct share or all official 

thievery and carelessness, but even those who do not 
realize that they are taxpayers, must pay in rent, and in 
what are called indirect taxes, which are levied on many 
goods in the hands of manufacturers, importers and 
wholesalers and added to the price when they reach the 
retailer. 

331 and from Next to increased honesty, the most 
creating and sud- noticeable agency in diffusing wealth is 
plying new wants, increased variety of production. Tele- 
phones, bicycles, automobiles, electric lighting and 
electric railways, and the hosts of other new things mean 
constant new demand for labor, resulting higher wages^ 
and at the same time, new facilities of exchange or 
production, with resulting variety and cheapness of 
product. Fortunately, man is a creature — the only 
one we know — of constantly increasing wants. Those 
who have money to pay out are always more ready to 
pay it for labor on new things, than for superfluous or 
wasted labor on old ones : so there is no need of indus- 
trial suicide by scamping. 

This labor for the new things of course comes out of 
more wearing and disagreeable pursuits (327, end of note 
from Mallock).* But as there would be no such pursuits 

* According to the United States census, from 1880 to 1890, 
those in the laborious pursuits of agriculture and the laborious 
and dangerous ones of minine and fisheries, had decreased from 



344 ^^^^ Protection of Rights. [^ 2>?>'^ 

unless the demand for them were very strong, they must 
have been kept going when labor has left them : that has 
been possible by labor-saving machinery. Of course, 
331 (a) mainiu ^^ labor Icavcs the disagreeable pursuits for 
through labor- morc attractive ones, the deserted pursuits 

saving machinery, iijt,ixii-. • -u- j 

call doubly lor labor-saving macmnery , and 
are doubly ready to reward the inventor. Farming, for 
instance, tho healthful, is lonely and laborious. Within 
a generation or two, inventors have given the farm 
machinery that has released a large part of the farm- 
hand labor and sent it into the towns. The labor thus 
released has done more than merely find employment 
without slowing up the earlier kinds of labor. It has 
made so many new things that it has kept the other 
mechanics on the jump to make enough old ones to 
exchange for them. That is to say, the desire for new 
things — telephones, bicycles, automobiles, mechanical 
piano-players, talking-machines, has made people work 
all the harder to buy them. 

But machinery often releases labor, and still increases 
supply. The world easily gets fitted to the increase of 
supply, because competition to sell the increased supply 
lowers prices so much that people soon use more goods 
of the same kind, or save enough money because of their 
lowered price, to use more goods of other kinds. 

But , it may be asked : How does all this ' ' make work ' ' 
and do away with reason for scamping? Is it not as 
broad as it is long — new things call for labor, labor-sav- 
ing machinery releases it, and the amount of employment 
is just the same as before ? The answer is that in most 
cases, labor-saving machinery cheapens goods so that 
several people can buy, where one could before; and 
this increases demand for the old goods, so that makers 
of them soon want back some of their old laborers whom 

46 per cent, of the whole number of persons laboring, to 39.6 
per cent. In domestic and personal service, there had been a 
decrease from 20.1 to 19.2 per cent. While in the more desirable 
pursuits, professional service had increased from 3.5 per cent, 
to 4.2; in trade and transportation, from 10.7 to 14.6; and 
in manufacturing and mechanical industries, from 19.6 to 22.4. 



§ 331 <^] Personal Property. 345 

machinery discharged, and often more laborers stilL 
-„,,,, ... Yet while the introduction of labor- 

331 (b). which, . 

tho of some harm savmg machinery has always been a 
at the outset, blessing to workmen so f a,r as they were 
consumers, in the early days of "the great in- 
dustry" introduced by steam, it threw so many out 
of employment that they had very little to consume. 
Steam-power did not directly lead to the change. 
More directly it was due to inventions like Arkwright's 
loom, Whitney's cotton-gin, and Stephenson's locomo- 
tive. But they could come only after other men of great 
ability had provided the steam-power. But however 
the great industry came, it suddenly produced so many 
more goods with so much less labor, that great numbers 
of people were thrown out of employment until the world 
got fitted to the new state of affairs. Not only was time 
needed for invention to supply new occupations, but 
there was scant communication and travel to get labor- 
ers new places: so the distress was very great. Many 
people thought that inventions were a curse ; and work- 
men, and even sentimental philanthropists, often de- 
stroyed machinery. 

The effect of these circumstances was that for a time 
the poor were getting poorer from lack of employment, 
and the rich richer from the profits of the machines. 
This started the cry of "the poor poorer, and the rich 
richer" which became one of the stock expressions of 
Marx, Lassalle and their school, and is echoed, despite 
all new facts, to this day. 

The old facts were even so bad that Marx promulgated 
an alleged "bronze" (generally quoted as "iron") law, 
that wages will always be the lowest on which wage- 
earners can subsist — a law often quoted by agitators 
to-day, and approved by audiences with money in the 
savings-banks. 

But in the modern world, increased 
IfJof Jny^nlw!'' Communication and travel enable labor to 
circulate freely in search of new employ- 
ment when machinery disturbs old employment, and 



346 The Protection of Rights, [i H^ ^ 

workmen are not now opposed to machinery as generally 
or as bitterly as they once were. Many of them more or 
less clearly realize three things, especially the first — that 
a cheapening of most things increases demand so much 
that often as many producers are needed with machines 
as without them ; second, that even if that does not turn 
out to be the case, the discharged people are apt to 
get work in making some new product or cheapening 
some old one; and third (tho it is realized more faintly 
than the rest) that the laborers themselves enjoy the 
cheapening of product, just as the rest of the com- 
munity does. 

So much for what the general progress of the world, 
outside of the man himself, can do for him. But even 
now, things do not always adjust themselves promptly 
enough to save the poor man the choice between getting 
nothing at all, and getting half what he produces. His 
only protection against being forced to take what he 
can get, is not to be poor; and he can help being poor 
by putting away something whenever he 

wealth^ hTmself^"'^^^ ^^^ Spare it. Then he or his union can 
say to anybody who wants to hire: "If 

332 (a), by fore- - >/ • 1 - 11 a 

handedness you won t givc what wc really produce, 

tmes^ '^^^'^ we won't work at all, and you won't have 

any chance to make profits." Yet a man 
would better take a little less in bad times, than go 
unemployed, especially as, in one sense, he cannot pro- 
duce as much in bad times as in good. Of course a 
cloth-mill can run out just as many yards of cloth in 
bad times as in good, but it will not have the chance 
to run out as many, because most things will not sell 
for as much, and some will not sell at all. 

At first it looks as if it should make no difference to 
a man if his own product falls in price when other things 
332 (b). in which ^^^^ "^OO' ^.ud that if he only gets one dollar 
prices of necessi- where he uscd to get two, but can 'buy 

ties tend to keep , . ■, . . -, i 1 . 1 11 1 • • 'j 

up, while those of tv/icc as much With that dollar, he is just 
luxuries fall. ^^ wqW off. But whcu priccs fall in bad 
times, they do not all fall together. When people have 



§ 7)^2 c] Personal Property. 347 

to economize, they cut off the things they can easiest 
do without : so prices of those things fall ; but the prices 
of things a man must have, keep up pretty well, and for 
them he must pay two dollars where he paid two before, 
even if he gets but one dollar for the sort of things he 
produces himself. Now those things that a man can 

do without, are a larger portion of what is produced, 
than generally realized. Civilization consists almost en- 
tirely in things (and thoughts) that a man can do with- 
out. The savage has all that a man must have. Even 
take tobacco and w^hiskey — not that they are civiliza- 
tion, but they are things that people can do without, 
and yet they cost the country more than bread and 
meat put together. So, plainly, there must be other 
things that people give up easier than tobacco and 
alcohol. For instance, people can generally be com- 
fortable for a time without new clothes or new furniture, 
or repairing and painting, or giving parties. 

When business is slow, as it is in luxuries in hard 
times, people compete for customers by lowering prices, 
and w^hen times are good, people want so many more 
things, that the supply is apt to be a little short, and 
they compete for them by bidding higher prices. 

And now we come to the great and terrible question: 
What can he who has not the ability to produce much, 
do for himself? 

332 (c). By cuiti- The first step toward a reasonable answer 
vating Ability. jg ^q realize that the question is partly 
one between him and the God who made him as he is; 
and it is also partly a question between him and him- 
self: for unless a man is an idiot, he can do something 
to cultivate ability. Ability consists largely in knowl- 
edge, foresight, self-control and energy — a man can edu- 
cate himself, think ahead, fight laziness, and control 
all desires that tempt him to seek a small present enjoy- 
ment at the expense of a greater future one. All this 
covers taking care of his health : for if he educates him- 
self in the most necessary knowledge — that of his own 
body, and does not sacrifice the future to the tempta- 



348 The Protection oj Rights. [§ 332 c 

tions of the present, and is not lazy, he does take care 
of his health. There is not much danger from over- 
work; but there is much danger from overworry under 
the name of overwork. 

333. Poverty sel- -^s a matter of fact, it is next to im- 
dom blameless. possible to find a man suffering from 
poverty, if he is educated, forehanded, self-denying 
and energetic. It is only in cases of very exceptional 
misfortune, that distressful poverty is not a man's own 
fault. 

But people want something more than to be merely 
above distressful poverty. And there is hope of a 
man born poor, cultivating so much ability that he can 
make himself very comfortable indeed. Most of the 

rich men were born poor.* Of course it is 
m^en'borrf pS hard to tell how much of their ability was 

born in them, and how much cultivated, 
but it is certain that more of their spare time went into 
studying their work instead of playing, and that more 
of their early sixpences went into the savings-bank 
instead, of the beer-pot than was the case with most of 
the men who did. not rise. This is by no means counsel- 
ing that nobody should have any recreation while he is 

young and poor. But the best recreations 

depitt^ealth. ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ much money; books, music, 
swims, and walks in the parks and fields 
and under the stars, are within everybody's reach, if 
they only would cultivate a taste for them. One should 
consider not his youth alone, but his whole life — how he 
will have the best time by and large. In youth, the 



* Mr. Walker (loi and 227, notes) found that in '78 there were 
one hundred and seventy-six men conducting ten leading kinds 
of manufacture in Worcester, and only fifteen of them were the 
sons of manufacturers, and all but the fifteen began as journey- 
men. (Condensed from Wells.) 

The author once got a city audience of workmen to announce 
what proportion of their employers began as journeymen. 
Nearly all did Tho such facts are too generally known to 
require proof, they are not taken into account by those who 
argue "rich richer, and poor poorer". 



§ ^^6] Personal Property. 349 

wiser men have invested work and study and savings 
which have brought them com^pound interest later ; while 
those who have indulged themselves unduly while young, 
had no rewards to reap later, unless sickness and poverty 
are rewards. 

336. Wise philan- Nothing can answer the purpose of a 
thropy necessary more general diffusion of ability and 
to civilization. honesty, not even a more general diffusion 
of human charity: because Nature's law is that a man, 
to accomplish anything, must take care of himself. 
But charity can help if it takes the right directions, 
while it must hinder if it takes the wrong ones. The 
wrong ones are indiscriminate giving to those who 
would consume without producing, as the Communists 
and Socialists propose, The right ones are giving in 
directions that tend to develop ability. The plainest 
of those is educating the ignorant, and relieving the 
sick and hungry, especially such as are apt to try to 
produce for themselves when they are well enough. 

The sick and hungry who are not able to produce for 
themselves — the constitutional paupers, it seems settled 
that somebody else should take care of when their 
relatives cannot. It is often asked: Why should worth- 
less people be taken care of at all? Would it not be 
better to let them die and get rid of them? That is 
Nature's way, and is it not better to follow Nature? 
That might seem the common sense of it, but when 
Nature evolved human intelligence and human sym- 
pathies, she started a way with the unfortunates and 
incapables different from her old way of letting them 
starve; and, somehow, all the nations, like India and 
China, that do let their worthless people die, do not 
succeed in being worth very much themselves ; while 
nations like Italy and Spain that go to the opposite 
extreme, and give freely to beggars who could make 
a living if they would, do not come out so very much 
better. With them it is not so much a question of 
helping the unfortunate and incapable, as of encourag- 
ing the lazy. Such countries, of course, are full of 
beggars, and do not get on as well as the countries 



350 The Protection of Rights. {i Z2>^ 

where everybody has to produce what he lives on if 
he is able to. 

336 ra; It should After finding objections against all the 
continue on pres- revolutionary social changes that have 
ent lines. been proposed to help the poor, there seems 

nothing to do but what we are doing now, only doing it 
as much better as we can : civilization has been working 
at the problem some thousands of years, and must have 
learned something. Apparently all we can do for the 
lowest type of man is to wash him, doctor him, massage 
him, feed him, exercise him, make as much of a man 
of him as we can, educate him without devoting as 
much time to the most artificial spelling in the world 
as to some decent handicraft, and then turn him loose, 
if he is fit to turn loose, to be farther strengthened by 
the discipline of the world. 

As to the higher type of unemployed, the deserving 
and capable, there are seldom nearly as many of them 
as sympathetic people generally suppose. Most of the 
unemployed do not want to be employed. The "great 
problem of the unemployed" is ge'nerally only one form of 
the great problem of the useless and incapable, and with 
the improved adjustments of industry, it is becoming 
more and more so every day, or would be if strikes were 
restricted to reasonable cases. Yet there constantly are 
deserving men whom the shifts and accidents of trade 
are throwing out of employment. The effort should 
be to tide them over, of course, but (more effective 
still, tho, like all reform, slow) to educate them so that 
they will more often anticipate the shifts and accidents 
of trade. But not everything can be done by educa- 

tion. There are often highly educated doctors, lawyers, 
engineers, architects with nothing to do, yet education 
does help men: the educated generally have more fore- 
thought than men less fortunately brought up, and so 
are apt to have something laid up for a rainy day. For 
all classes of those who have nothing laid up — who if 
they ever had anything, have exhausted it, the Charity 
Organization Societies and Labor Bureaus are doing 



§336^] Personal Property. 351 

excellent work — better than any government ever did 
or is apt to do. 

We cannot remedy at once all the defects that the 
wisdom of the whole world has vainly attacked for a 
good many thousand years. But we cannot afford to 
throw over all it has succeeded in doing, in favor of 
imaginative untried schem.es, especially if they do not 
hold together any better than those we have already 
examined. 

Of course the ideal is a philanthropy 
336 (b). It should entirely spontaneous, but there is one con- 

help on\il those ^. , . -^ -.^ .-, 11,1 

that cannot work, dition where govcmmcnt should take one 
man's property and give it to another: 
spontaneous philanthropy may not always be within 
reach, tho it is generally where a little sense can find it; 
but government is always at hand, and may properly 
support a man who really cannot support himself and 
has no relatives who can support him. 

While caring for the unemployed is very apt to mean 
caring for the deliberately idle, caring for the unemploy- 
able is already recognized as among the functions of the 
civilized state. And this care of the unfortunate should 
not be restricted to those barely able to keep them- 
selves alive, but should be extended, as far as it can be 
without doing more harm than good, to those unable to 
keep themselves decently alive. Human nature has not 
yet been universally, or perhaps generally, evolved 
beyond the point where the strong will take advantage of 
the weak ; and it seems as legitimate for the law to pro- 
tect the weak from robbery under the form of bargains, 
as from robbery under other forms. Of course the diffi- 
culty of doing so without lessening freedom of contract 
and a saving sense of personal responsibility, is very 
great, but the law's cautious experiments toward it 
should be steadily continued, and more caution still 
should be used against the acceptance of quack panaceas. 

Under our civilization, government protects without 
charge against violence and theft, and also assigns counsel 
to an alleged criminal if he is unable to pay for it ; but 
to obtain disputed rights, a man must pay for counsel 



352 The Protection of Rights. [§ 336 6 

and court costs himself. Hence, as far as the law is 
evolved, it has been not unjustly called a luxury of 
the rich, and even the rich often refrain from resorting 
to it on account of the expense. To relieve the special 
disadvantages of the poor in this respect, there have 
been formed in several cities. Legal Aid Societies, which 
for some years have been of great service in securing the 
protection of the law for persons otherwise too poor or 
too ignorant to avail themselves of it. 

There is a limit on what government can safely take 
for such purposes : it should not take enough to prevent 
lazy people trying to protect themselves, or to discourage 
able people from producing. 

We have paid much attention to the 
tl?/LawT'"^^ °^ hopeless absurdity of some pet schemes 
for helping the poor man by law. Yet 
law is far from useless to help the less fortunate masses 
of mankind. All good laws help everybody, and until 
the recent appeal to law by the strong against the com- 
bined aggressions of the weak, the evolution of law 
has been toward the protection of the weak against 
the strong. But there is a great difference between 
laws to prevent oppression, and laws to give a man 
more than he can produce, at the expense of somebody 
else. Such laws, so far as they can be made to work, 
would simply oppress the somebody else. True, where 
a man is living in luxury and idleness and selfishness, 
a little oppression for the benefit of less fortunate people 
„„^ , , ^ ^ mi8:ht be TOod for him, if it were possible 

337 (a). Cannot . .a i . i • • i_ • 

discriminate be- for the law to Dcgm Oppressing nim, 
tween people. ^ithout going farther and oppressing the 
wrong people, 
^-o „ , Not only does there seem to be something 

338. Benevolence •-,.,, -1 J^ j_ i_i 

does not prevent ac- m history to snow that a reasonable com- 

cumulating wealth, passion for suffering, even if the suffering 
comes from a man's own weakness and fault, helps peo- 
ple who feel it, to get ahead; but other facts besides 
the progress of the benevolent nations, look as if the habit 
of being benevolent tends to enlarge Ability. Many of 



§339] Personal Property. 353 

the richest men are benevolent, and get rich and stay 
rich, in spite of all they give away. 

At first it looks as if it might be safe to take away from 
a man all that he might have over a reasonably good 
living, but it would stop the usefulness of such men as 
Vanderbilt and Stewart just at the time when they are 
giving employment to most people, and doing the most 
to make everybody's money go farther. Even if a man 
is getting rich by the sort of speculation 

■ ^^^^ ^ '°"' which is about the same as robbery , it 
would be impossible for the laws to select the kind of 
speculation any better than the laws against fraud can 
select it. Yet there is good reason to hope that the laws 
can gradually be improved. 

But there is much more honest speculation than 
fraudulent speculation, and it saves the community a 
great deal of money by anticipating changes and pre- 
paring for them. It is like springs on a wagon. 

If speculation is by deceit and monopoly, of course 
all ill-gotten gains should be restored, but it is not so 
plain that they should be confiscated to public use 
if the robbed person cannot be identified; and success- 
ful new laws to make it easier to prove gains ill-gotten 
than the present laws do, can be only, as the present 
laws are, the product of slow growth. 

It is often asked : If a man is not active either in pro- 
duction or speculation, but is merely living on a for- 
tune which may have been justly earned, but in fact 
was not earned by its possessor at all — for which he 
never gave the community any return, why not relieve 
him of that excess which does him no good, and put it 
where it will do some? 

The law could not go into such fine questions as the 
amount of good it does him, or he does with it. But 
even suppose the question ' ' lumped " : if a man spends 
a great superfluity even in the best of the selfish wa^^s — 
in fine decorations and other works of art, rare books, 
and all that, why not let the community take that 
money and spend it for the same things, so that many 



354 The Protection of Rights. [§339 

men would enjoy them, instead of one man and his 
friends ? 

340 L w cannot ^'^^ ^^^ reason, the community would 
regulate wealth probably Spend it very badly. Tammany 
^'^^^' taste, and even Congressional taste, are not 

good, and even that of the Army of the Tennessee regard- 
ing statues has been questioned. 

There is,, however, a better reason, al- 
llmi% AbUitT ready partly given. Such fortunes, even if 
wisely devoted to the public good, would 
not begin to benefit the public as much as do many of 
the efforts of enterprisers which would not have been 
called forth if the enterprisers could not leave their for- 
tunes to whom they please. Enterprisers would be apt 
to stop in mid-career, if going on involved accustoming 
their children to habits of living which they could not 
hope to keep up. When a great enterpriser is at the 
height of his powers, his ambitions for himself are apt 
to be satisfied. His usefulness is kept up to increase 
the share of his production which he can leave to 
those he loves. 

When we were discussing the general principles of 
rights and duties, we concluded that there is a certain 
balance in things. And it would seem to require that 
341. Duties of while the world is at work, every man 
wealth. should do his share: and as a man who 

has great powers or great opportunities, gets much 
more from the world than mere government conveni- 
ence and police protection, — much more in the way of 
honor and ease than his money pays for, he conse- 
quently owes the community something more than 
merely his share of the ordinary taxes. 

But while we admit that the great enterpriser does 
his share of the world's work when, in addition to pay- 
ing his taxes and being reasonable in his charities, he 
finds work for his less able fellow men, and conducts 
his enterprises honestly and liberally; the rich man 
who is not an enterpriser certainly has his duties too, 
especially in a country suffering, like ours, from having 
in political office too few men who are so rich that they 



§ 342] Personal Property. 355 

"can afford to be honest". A few such men are too 
o>,. , , / ,-*■ modest (wisely so, in some instances) to 

Z^\ (a). In politics. ^ ^ \^\. ^ r .^ r^ 

take omce, out most of them prefer to 
amuse themselves, all of them hate to associate with 
the low type of politician we sometimes elect, and — per- 
haps the strongest reason of all — our people are not 
fond of electing rich men of leisure, unless they started 
in the ranks; and, even then, in too many cases, unless 
the candidates are ready to pay for it. They should 
not pay for it, because there is enough bribery of bosses 
and of voters already. True, to be useful in politics, 
a man need not necessarily take office: he can study 
politics and public men so as to know good from bad, 
he can support the good and oppose the bad, and help 
educate the people to do the same. 
341 (b). In charity "^^^ there are other ways than politics 
and education or in which a man of leisure can reciprocate 

even in sport. i x xi -j^ • ^ • r ^ • 

what the community is doing for him — • 
there are all sorts of charitable and educational and 
artistic institutions, and necessities for new institutions, 
that need his time even more than they need his money. 
, , If the best he can do and all he can 

men'peculia'rfy^b'- ^o. is to amuse othcrs while he amuses 
dulv"^ °^ P"'^'"^ himself — in horse-races, yacht-races and 

similar amusements, he cannot be regarded 
as useless, even if he does not avoid the palpable danger 
of such sports. But compared with other countries, 
America does not get her share of service in politics, 
charity, education, public improvements, the arts, and 
even amusement, from her men of leisure: in older 
countries, such duties are matters of course in the edu- 
cation of the more fortunate classes. But here, as we 
are all free and equal and govern ourselves, our need 
of a class to attend honestly and energetically to politics, 
is much greater than the need in the older countries : 
we govern ourselves very badly. Tho the Old World 
sometimes sends us a Carl Schurz, a Godkin or a Franz 
Sigel, we are still the dumping-ground for its refuse 
population; and we have no class of hereditary poli- 
ticians and men of public spirit, and no long and 



35^ The Protection of Rights. [§342 

wealthy past sending us a rich inheritance of charita- 
ble, educational and artistic institutions. The Ameri- 
can man of leisure who satisfies himself by merely giving 
money, neglects his other duties, and devotes himself 
to mere selfish sports and luxury, is just as much more 
blamable than the European one, as our civilization is 
younger and less developed than the European one. 
A man, rich or poor, anywhere, who does 
3.43.^Use^ess not do his fair share of the world's work, 

"dependent", is simply one of "the dependent classes " — 
he depends on others while giving no ade- 
quate return. His money may be in one sense an ade- 
quate return, but unless he made it himself, he is merely 
dependent on the man who made it, whether that man 
be alive or dead. Dependence does very well for 
women and children, but it is disgraceful in a man. 

No American has surpassed in wisdom or benevo- 
lence, the one who summed up this whole subject of 
the distribution of wealth in the following winged 
words : 

"Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. 
The basis of political economy is non-interference. 
The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter 
of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, 
and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary lav/s. 
Give no bounties ; make equal laws ; secure life and 
property, and you need not give alms. Open the 
doors of opportunity to talent and virtue, and they will 
do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad 
hands. In a free- and just commonwealth, property 
rushes from the idle and imbecile to the industrious, 
brave and persevering." — Emerson. 



BOOK II. 

THE PROMOTION OF CONVENIENCE. 
CHAPTER XXIV. 

PRELIMINARY SURVEY. 

So much for government's protection of rights. We 
saw that its other general function is the promotion of 
the people's convenience. Yet while we have been dis- 
cussing the state's relation to rights, it has come in 
our way to touch upon some conveniences — when we 
were treating of natural monopolies, we mentioned 
roads, bridges and ferries, railroads through country 
and city, water and gas supplies, sewer connections, 
and the development of extraordinary mines, springs 
and scenery. 

As we know, some of these things are objects of 
attention by all civilized governments. So are many 
other conveniences — chief among them, money, educa- 
tion, postal service — which in Europe often includes 
the carrying of telegrams and packages — surveys and 
maps of the country, harbors well dredged, protected 
and docked; lighthouses, coast life-saving stations, 
parks, museums, libraries, almshouses, asylums and 
hOvSpitals. The things enumerated in this paragraph are 
provided by all civilized governments. Some govern- 
ments also provide superintendence of public health, 
electricity, gas, public baths and lavatories, pawnshops, 

357 



358 The Promotion of Convenience. 

concerts, lectures, houses for the self-supporting poor, 
and cemeteries. 

These things are not generally gratuitous, however, 
even in the sense that taxes pay for them: persons 
using money, railroads, mails, harbors, water, light, 
cars, ferries, houses, and cemeteries for their dead, 
generally pay for them directly. 

A century ago, hardly any government took care of 
any of the things named, except money, roads, light- 
houses, harbors, and, in a very limited way, mails and 
parks. Even then the parks were hardly public parks : 
they were rarely more than the pleasure-grounds of 
rulers and rich people, occasionally thrown open to 
the public. The great parks which everybody can en- 
joy at all times were almost unknown. 

Regarding some of these conveniences, great differ- 
ence of opinion prevails as to whether government 
should supply them, or leave people to do it for them- 
selves. As to those that all civilized governments 
supply, we may as well consider debate closed, at least, 
as regards the wisdom of government supplying them. 
But even of them, there are some on which there is 
great debate regarding what kind and how much, 
especially regarding money, treatment of the defective 
classes, roads in their new forms of railroads and street 
railways, and sundry minor matters. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

MONEY. 

General Considerations. ^ 

We can begin with a topic that has, at least, one 
easy side. Of all the items enumerated, probably the 
earliest supplied by government, and the one where 
government agency is most taken for granted, is money. 
The use of our spending any time now on money ques- 
tions may be doubted, as it may be claimed that 
the Act of March, 1900, (not to speak of the elec- 
tions in November of that year and in 1904,) dis- 
posed of them all, as far as this country is concerned. 
344. Reasons for But Mr. Bryan's followers did not seem to 
studying money, think SO, nor does the Honorable Tom 
Watson. Money questions will never stay disposed of, as 
long as the vast majority of mankind are of low produc- 
ing power and low intelligence. So long, men will try 
to better their condition by tricks with money, land- 
tenure, government control of production, frequent 
strikes — all of the old schemes to get something out 
of nothing, but with hosts of new faces. 

Moreover, another reason why the Act of 1900 did not 
finally settle all the questions, is because it did not 
touch them all, as we shall see. 

For three reasons, it is very important for the citizen 
to understand the government's relation to money. 
First, because meddling with money questions by the 
ignorant has caused this country and most countries 
some terrible disasters — this country, perhaps, worst 

359 



360 The Promotion of Convenience. [§344 

of all, because here the ignorant have most to say. 
Second, because money questions come more directly 
home, literally to each man's pocket, than any other 
questions which governmient affects. Third, because, 
for that very reason, people are apt to suppose they 
know all about money questions, and are therefore less 
apt to leave them, than questions of the post-office, 
the coast-survey and lighthouse board, and the admin- 
istration of war and justice, to be settled by people who 
really know. 

Even the administration of justice is hardly a more 
important government function than issuing money. 
True, justice is more important in a general sense than 
money: but nothing works more against justice than 
ignorant tampering with money. Money touches every 
man, while not one rnan in fifty ever gets into court; 
and when he does, he soon finds that he does not know 
anything about law. But nearly every man has a 
little money, and so seems to think he knows all about 
that; and apparently, if he has none at all, he is still 
more apt to think he knows all about it. 

345. Barter and Now, to begin with the simplest aspect 

■^on^y- of the subject, if there were no money in 

the world, and a farmer wanted a hat, and his wife 
a frock, and his child a pair of shoes, he would trade 
off for them at the store a load of potatoes or any avail- 
able thing he might have. The usual name for such 
dealings is barter. It is customary only before people 
become civihzed enough to have money. Yet the 
farmer might go around long before finding a shoe- 
maker who wanted just potatoes enough to pay for a 
pair of shoes, and a hatter who would take just potatoes 
enough to pay for a hat, and a dry-goods man who 
wanted just potatoes enough to pay for a frock. More- 
over, as the city storekeepers do not generally bother 
with such dealings, the farmer might spend a week, 
perhaps, without finding one who would. They would 
all laugh at him for asking them to. 

Still, of course all this trouble would be necessary 



§ 347] Money — General Considerations. 361 

only if we had no money. Now as we have money, 
the farmer naturall}?- takes his potatoes where they buy 
potatoes, and then takes his money where they sell 
shoes or hats or frocks. So the mere fact that we 
have money, would save him as much troble as, 
probably, his potatoes cost. On considering this 
in regard to all sorts of dealings, one gets some idea 
of the very great usefulness of money. 

346. Swindling by Suppose, tho, that our farmer got paid in 
'"°"6y' poor money? then he could not do any- 
thing. But as any man giving another poor money de- 
ceives him and robs him, what is to be thought of a 
man who tries to make all the money in the country 
poor? Plainly that he would attempt the greatest fraud 
that can well be conceived of, and do a frightful deal of 
harm. And yet at the height of what we Americans 
fondly believe to be the highest civilization yet attained, 
many well-meaning men have attempted that gigantic 
fraud, from ignorance; and many others from dishonesty. 

347. Kinds of In the United States we use many 
'^o"6y' • kinds of money — paper, gold, silver, nickel 
and copper. The Chinese, Spartans and a good many 
other nations have had iron money. The American 
Indians used wampum for money; and they also, as 
well as our New England ancestors, used discs of shell. 
The fur-traders near our northern borders, and many 
other people, have used skins. Tobacco too has been 
used, and so have wheat and corn; and in Africa, 
cattle and even slaves have been used as money, and 
called live money, as distinct from other kinds, called 
dead money. 

We give all these things the same name — money. 
Now all things that can have a name in common, must 
have at least one quality in common, but they need 
not look alike, any more than all things we call food 
look alike. The very different things we call food, 
can all be e^-^en, and will all help keep the body 
alive. 



362 The Promotion of Convenience. [§34^ 

348, Qualities of ^<^ ^^^ "^^^ things that have been called 
all money. money, have the quality in common that 

wherever one of them is used as money, people will 
give nearly all other things for it. 

But some people will give nearly all other things for 
a check on a bank, or a promissory note. Yet they are 
not money, because people generally will give other 
things for money, while for checks and notes, other 
things will not be given by people generally, but only 
by people who know all about the checks and notes, 
and have confidence in them. 

Another difference is that if a check or a note turns 
out at any time not to be good, the person who last 
received it usually has a right to demand that the per- 
son who paid it shall make it good : that is one reason 
for wanting to know if the person signing is solvent. 
But if money is what it appears to be when it is paid, 
the debt is discharged once for all. If, for instance, a 
bank breaks, or a government is overthrown, those who 
have any of its money cannot require the people from 
whom they received it, to make it good to them. Of 
course counterfeit money is not included in this condi- 
tion : counterfeit money is not money at all — not even 
bad money, any more than a portrait is a person. But 
real money may turn out bad : government notes are 
real money, but they w^ould be worth no more than 
paper if the government did not pay them. So a silver 
dollar of the present weight is real money, but it would 
be worth but fifty cents if the government would not 
give a gold dollar for it. So bad money can be legal 
tender, and a man be legally obliged to take it : the 
treasury notes now in circulation are not good money, 
because they are not expressly payable in gold, yet 
they are legal tender; and bad money was made legal 
tender all through the civil war, and for years after it, 
until in 1879 government made the money good by 
being ready to give gold for it. 

When a creditor accepts a legal tender 
as^LegaffenTer!^ (2IO-2EO h) the debtor is legally free from 
farther liability, even if the money should 
turn out bad, unless it is counterfeit. 



§ 352] Money — General Considerations. 363 

Now we are ready to pack our characterizations of 
money into a portable definition: 

350. Definition Money is anything for which substan- 

reached. tially all the people in a community will part 

with anything they are willing to dispose of, and which dis- 
charges forever the debt for which it is received. 

Broadly considered, money is simply power con- 
veniently arranged in units. A hundred dollars is a 
hundred units of power controlling most of the things 
that men generally care for. After men have enough 
money to satisfy all material and aesthetic wants, they 
crave more because they want more power. The great 
bankers^ often control the policies of nations. But 
it should not be forgotten that the great philosophers 
control them more often, and for centuries after the 
bankers are dead. 

Usually the most noticeable difference 
buys less than good, between good and bad money is that for 

anything they have to sell, people want 
more bad money than good money. For instance, when 
our New England ancestors began using discs of shell 
for money, at first people would take a few of them as 
pay for ordinary purchases; but soon, so many discs 
were made that nobody would sell a thing for any amount 
of them. The same way during our great civil war: 
people North wanted at one time nearly three green- 
back dollars for a thing that they would take one gold 
dollar for, and people at the South wanted a hundred 
Confederate paper dollars for anything they would sell 
for one gold one, and at last they would not sell things 
for the paper dollars at any price. But people sell 
the same thing now for a United States paper dollar 
that they will sell for a gold one. 

These great differences in the value of 
oaper nfdney'." paper dollars have arisen because the 

value of paper dollars depends upon the 
chance of getting gold ones for them. A note of a govern- 
ment or of a bank has no magic about it, any more than 
the note of an individual, even tho the government 



364 The Promotion of Convenience. [§352 

note does have more pictures over it, and the pictures 
do fool the ignorant. It is but a piece of paper contain- 
ing a promise to pay, and all its value beyond that 
of the pictures, is in the reliability of that promise. 
Now you can get a gold dollar for a paper one at any 
moment. During the civil war you could not, and it 
was very uncertain when you could; and the value of 
the paper dollar varied with that uncertainty until at 
times it was but forty cents in gold. The uncertainty 
was greater regarding a Confederate paper dollar than 
a Union one: so the Confederate dollar was generally 
worth less than the Union one, and finally it became 
certain that you never could get a gold dollar for a 
Confederate paper one, and the paper ones were worth- 
less. 

Tho a paper dollar is money, people often prefer a 
gold one, not merely because a paper dollar will soon 
wear out, but especially because, if a paper dollar 
should not be useful as money, it cannot be put to any 
other use worth a dollar. It would only be used as a 
picture, generally a pretty poor one, or as paper pulp to 
make new paper, and it is not worth a tenth of a cent 
for that purpose; while the gold in a gold dollar can 
be put to a thousand uses, any one of which is worth a 
dollar — in short, a gold dollar is worth a dollar, and a 
paper dollar is worth nothing except as a promise to pay 
a dollar; and how much that promise is worth, depends 
upon how likely it is to he kept. 

353, Fiat Money, Money of no intrinsic value is called 
Token Money. fl^t money: fiat is the Latin for let it he. 
Fiat money is money only because the government 
says: "Let it be money." It is also sometimes called 
token money, just as a gambler's counters are tokeris 
to be redeemed in money valuable in itself. 

354. Redemption Money valuable in itself, which redeems 
■^""ey- fiat money or token m.oney, is called re- 
demption money. A gold dollar will be taken almost 
anywhere for about the value of so much gold, because 
somebody near at hand can use it as so much gold. 



§ 354] Money — General Considerations. 365 

But a paper dollar will not be taken at full value in a 
country where it was not issued, because nobody can 
use it there for anything but old paper, and it must 
be sent home for redemption. If you were in London 
with a pocketful of greenbacks and nothing else, you 
could not buy anything until you had hunted up a dealer 
in foreign money, and sold him your greenbacks at 
enough discount to pay him to send them here and 
get the gold back. Even if you had American gold, 
instead of greenbacks, the shopkeepers would not 
generally take that, but you could find ten people who 
would, to one who would take greenbacks. Only a 
few special dealers would buy the greenbacks; almost 
any banker or large shopkeeper would take the gold, 
tho at a discount, but a very trifling one compared with 
that on the greenbacks. Within a block, somebody 
would be ready to put the gold into the melting-pot and 
use it for making jewelry or gilding or something of 
that kind; or the English mint would take it and coin 
it into their money. But nobody could do anything 
with the greenback except send it to America and wait 
for the gold, and pay expenses both ways. Therefore, 
paper money never could be quite as good as gold 
money for foreign trade. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

MONEY (continued). 

Some American Experience. 

355. How paper ^^ already said, during the civil war, 

money cheated greenbacks became worth only forty cents 
creditors, ^^ ^ dollar, and a result was that if, 

when the war broke out, a man owed a dollar pay- 
able in two or three years, he could then make his 
creditor take forty cents for it. That was just what 
hosts of people did, and what hosts of people, during 
the Bryan campaigns, wanted to do; and still want to 
do, by getting a chance to pay irredeemable silver dol- 
lars where they have borrowed gold ones. During the 
war, the transaction was somewhat disguised by the 
pieces of paper being marked as worth dollars, and 
people began taking them before they began to depre- 
ciate. Moreover, it was not the fashion to speak of 
them as going down in value, but of gold as going up ; 
and what was more important, people endured it all 
cheerfully, so as to enable the government to use the 
bad money to carry on the war. The government made 
bad money, partly because most of our rulers at 
that time had had little occasion to study finance, 
and knew no better. Government needed money at 
once to pay the expenses of the army. So, rather than 
incur the delay and expense of borrowing, they thought 
it the simplest thing to issue promises to pay, which 
were our present greenbacks or their ancestors. 

As this money was legal tender, and people had to 

366 



§357] Money — Some^ American Experience. 367 

take it, a little explanation may be needed to show 
how it could get bad. People did not need to sell 
355 (a), and things for it unless they got their own 

mised prices. prices. Therefore, as government kept 
on making more of it, and people began to lose con- 
fidence in it, they put up prices, including the price 
of gold, so that a man who wanted a gold dollar to 

356. " Never mind V^J ^ <iebt in Europe, soon had to pay 
Europe." for it over two dollars and sixty cents in 
greenbacks. 

357. Effect of . ^"- *^^ years '93 and '94 depreciated 
money not payable silver made a difference to the American 
'" ^°^' people of a seventh of all their property 
— three times as much as the civil war cost- 
about ten thousand million dollars — nearly a hundred 
and fifty dollars to each man, woman and child in the 
United States. True, many men, women and children 
never had a hundred and fifty dollars, but a good many 
of them might have had it in wages, in those years, 
who did not get it because our money was not good 
enough for all foreign purposes. But of course refer- 
ence <svas made only to the average loss — some men 
lost millions, many men lost thousands, nearly every 
laborer in the land lost heavily in wages, but perhaps 
a few people lost nothing, and some even gained — a few 
largely. 

Notwithstanding that for more than twenty years 
before '93, you could get a gold dollar for a paper one 
or a silver one, our money was not, during those twenty 
years, what it should be abroad or even at home, as 
the events of '93 abundantly demonstrated. Wise 
people were afraid that in a short time they could 
not get a gold dollar for a paper one or a silver one, 
and ran business at very low pressure in consequence. . 
The fear existed because very few of our paper dol- 
lars were actually made by law payable in gold: most 
of them were payable either in silver or in "coin", 
which is either gold or silver; and there got to be so 
many of these dollars out, that people began to fear 
that if any mishap like a war or a panic should reduce 



368 The Promotion of Convenience. [§357 

the government's revenue, it would not have gold 
enough to be able to pay such paper dollars in any- 
thing but silver. Moreover, none of the silver dollars 
were made by actual law payable in gold, and per- 
haps we might not have been able to get gold enough 
to pay them if they were. 

Our silver dollar is only token money (353). It really 
contains only fifty cents' worth of silver, and if our 
paper money were redeemed only in it, and it were 
not redeemed in gold, our silver dollars might easily 
go the way the greenbacks went during the civil war. 
We are really saddled with two kinds of doubtful money. 
358. Why the There is only fifty cents' worth of silver 

silver dollar has in the silver dollar because when the 
eprecia e . amount was settled upon, silver was worth 

much more than now — the amount put in the dollar 
was worth about a gold dollar then. But since then, 
especially from '79 to '93, the production of silver has 
been greater than that of gold, and the price has come 
down with a run. Not only has the increased amount 
lowered the price of silver, but there has also been a 
great decrease in the uses for it. For some time pre- 
vious to the publication of this edition, it has been 
rising, but not enough to materially alter the conditions 
herein stated. 

When there is a great deal of anything, or people 
have little use for it, it is cheap — what people cannot 
use, they will sell low. 

The great decrease in the uses for silver was mainly 
due to a large part of the world abandoning its legal- 
tender quality for large sums. Soon after the uniting 
of the German states into an empire in 1871, the empire 
wanted to make a new uniform money system to take 
the place of the old differing systenis of the various 
kingdoms, and it concluded to make people pay their 
large debts only in gold. So a vast amount of old 
silver coin was thrown out of use, and put upon the 
market merely as silver. The effect was the same 
as if a corresponding weight of silver table service had 
been thrown on the market : silver became so cheap that 



§ 360] Money — Some American Experience. 369 

soon Belgium, Holland and France stopped the yearly 
increase of their silver money, which they had been 
making for a long time. That left still more silver in 
the general market. They did that to keep out of the 
very scrape that we ran ourselves into by not doing it 
— by having so much depreciated silver coin on hand 
in 1893 that the danger of not being able to redeem 
it in gold brought on the terrible financial panic. 

In 1873, some of our own wisest statesmen, antici- 
pating the wisdom of France, got a law passed discon- 
tinuing the use of silver for payments above five dollars. 
But that did not throw much old coin on the market, 
because we were not using much. But our example 
added force to the examples of France and Germany. 
In June, '93, India, the greatest silver-coinage country in 
the world, stopped coining silver, the price went lower 
than ever before, and that helped precipitate our panic. 
359 Why coins When the price of silver came down so, 
were not made our government did not put more of it in 
eavier. ^-^^ dollar, SO as to keep it worth a gold 

dollar. It is always hard for government to do a new 
thing, because so many people have to get together 
and agree, and in this case people interested in silver- 
mining opposed using twice as much silver for a dollar, 
altho it would have increased the demand for their 
metal. For one reason, they thought it better to work for 
the repeal of the law passed in 1873, which had dimin- 
ished the use of silver as money, and so had diminished 
the demand for their product. Therefore they wanted 
silver again made legal tender for all debts, large and 
small; and in spite of all we have seen, they succeeded 
in recovering again for their light-weight dollar, the 
legal-tender power that had been taken away in '73. 
In '78, they got a law passed making the light-weight 
360. American Re- ^o^^^^s legal tender, ^and requiring the 
monetization in g'overnment to coin from $2,000,000 to 

J "70 A ) C\f\ " / f 

^" ' $4,000,000 worth of silver bullion a month. 

The smaller sum alone was coined, resulting in an aver- 
age of about $2,500,000 in money. Government received 
these dollars for taxes, but was not under obligation to 



370 The Promotion of Convenience. [§360 

redeem any not needed for taxes. In 1890 the coinage 
was made to depend, after July ist, '91, solely on the 
government's need of money, but the treasury was obliged 
to buy four million five hundred thousand ounces of 
silver a month, whether it coined the silver or not, and 
to issue "treasury notes " in exchange for it. These too 
are receivable for all public dues, and are legal tender, 
but they are redeemable only in silver dollars, which are 
also legal tender. Making coin worth but fifty cents, 
legal tender for a dollar, would be swindling creditors 
just as badly as they were swindled by the forty-cent 
greenback during the civil war, if the coin was worth 
only fifty cents; but it is token money (353) for a dollar, 
and as long as redeemable, is of course worth a dollar. 
But, as already said, it may not always be redeemed. 
Whatever silver had to be coined, was not put into 
dollars heavy enough to be each worth a dollar, 
partly because people generally did not know the dan- 
gers of light coinage; and some who did, would gladly 
have risked them, and have exposed the whole coun- 
try to them, for the sake of selling their silver. So 
they professed to attribute the panic to thousands of 
other things; they even hired pamphleteers, speakers 
and newspaper writers to befog the people and make them 
clamor for "cheap money for the poor man" — a light- 
weight legal-tender dollar rather than one of full value. 
They could get enough people to vote 
fooling'thefgnorant. ^^^ such a thing because majorities are nat- 
urally ignorant on new questions, and in 
this case they were fooled by the argument that cheap 
money is good for the poor man, because he can get 
more of it for a given amount of labor. Many people 
were led honestly to believe this an advantage; but 
also many owing debts hoped to pay them in light- 
weight dollars, which, if the government would not 
redeem them, could be had for fifty cents' worth of work 
or product. They did not see that if one man gets the 
cheap money easier, other men get it easier too; in 
other words, the man has to pay it out easier — just as 
much easier as he gets it. So he gains nothing. 



§362] Money — Some American Experience. 371 

On the other hand, all creditors lose; and for every- 
body, it works like such schemes as scamped labor (228 h) 
or mistaken taxation (464). All those who produce 
goods at first hand, like farmers and miners, get money 
easier only for their own work, but they have to pay 
it out easier for all work which they buy, with its 
added cost in reaching them through many hands. 
As an illustration, suppose that, under cheap money, 
a copper-miner wants to buy a copper kettle. True, 
he gets an inflated price for the amount of copper in it, 
but he has to pay back the same inflated price for 
that amount of copper, and, in addition, to pay inflated 
prices for carrying the copper to the smelting-furnace, 
rolling-mill, kettle-factory, wholesale dealer, retail 
dealer, and at last to the user himself. Moreover, he 
has to pay inflated prices for every mechanic and 
exchanger who touches it on the way. Inflated cur- 
rency not only always inflates laborers' wages, but- 
inflates the half-dozen profits on ever^^thing on its 
way from the farmer or miner or lumberman, through 
the manufacturer up to the retailer, so that when 
the laborer takes his inflated wages to buy his supplies, 
he finds the supplies inflated vastly more than his 
wages are. Hence the people who agitate most for 
rag money and light money, are the very ones who 
would suffer most from it: a laborer gets an inflated 
price for his own one process, and has to pay inflated 
prices for a dozen. The case is something like that 
of scamped labor (228 h). 

If cheap money makes all these people pay more 
than they get, it is not easy to determine precisely 
who makes the excess — whose is the profit. 

362 Wh or fit ^^ ^^^ *^^^^ ^^ silver, apparently some 

bv light-weight of it would have to go to inflated wages 
^''^^■"^ for silver - miners , because owners of 

mines would bid for more of them; and certainly 
much of it goes to their employers and the money- 
changers — just the very people that a dishonest voter 
would think he was going to cheat by paying his debts 
in cheap money. The employer who pays out a thou- 



372 ' ; The Promotion of Convenience. ' [§362 

sand dollars a day, would seem likely to benefit more 
by cheap money than the man who pays out only two 
or three. 

The debtors who can cheat most with cheap money, 
are not, after all, generally the poor and ignorant. That 
is another place where the latter fool themselves or 
are fooled. The people in debt are of course those 
363 Th r r ^^^ have the property, intelligence and 
not 'the debtor character needed to get credit. But that 
^ class has not furnished most of the votes 

for cheap silver : most of the votes for cheap money 
and for all other attempts to make something out 
of nothing, come from the ignorant and irresponsible 
people who are always in poverty, and always ready 
to listen to any deceptive promise of a short cut out 
of it, like socialism or communism or magical taxation 
or trade-union coercion or cheap money. 

Another argument that got votes for making light- 
weight silver dollars legal tender, was that silver is 
naturally the money of the poor because it is cheap, 
and gold the money of the rich. There is no truth in 
„„. ^, , this, nor would it be of any consequence 

out- nor the cisss " 

that'handies least if it were true. It is simply an appeal to 
^°'^' blind prejudice. As a matter of fact, 

while poor people have to buy for cash, people rich 
enough to have bank accounts usually buy on monthly 
or quarterly account, and usually pay those accounts 
and all considerable debts with checks, and their small 
ones in silver change; it is quite probable that they 
do not use as much gold as people a shade worse off. 

Now that we have considered the mak- 
orgsl^^ ''^"'*^ ing of silver, legal tender again, and coin- 
ing more of it, and the dangers of doing 
so, let us see how all that brought about the panic 
of '93. 

The silver which the government was forced to buy 
(360), was paid for either in notes from the treasury, 
which were promises to pay "coin", and which the 
government might redeem in silver; or in certificates 



I 



§ 365 ^] Money — Some American Experience. 373 

that the treasury had received and would pay back 
silver dollars. These were also paid for any silver 
that people might be tired of carrying around. These 
notes and certificates were not good money, but for 
the time they served the purpose, because even if the 
government paid silver dollars for them, it was ready 
to pay the silver dollars in gold. The trouble was 
that there got to be so many of the treasury notes 
and silver certificates, that people grew afraid that 
the government would not long be able to pay gold 
for the silver dollars which the paper represented. 
OCR , , o • The first noticeable effect was that 

365 (a). Begins . . -^ . ^ . . 

with alarm in people m Ji/Urope who owned our bonds 
"'^°'^^' and stocks, got frightened lest soon they 

might not be able to get gold for them, and began to 
send them here for sale. Those "people in Europe" 
had invested money here with our corporations, to 
build railroads and open mines and do many other 
things, or had lent us money to carry on the War for 
the Union. "When they got frightened lest they should 
be paid in silver, and sent the stocks and bonds back 
again to be sold, a large part of the money paid to 
the brokers for the bonds was treasury notes and silver 
certificates. These would not be taken in Europe: so 
importers went to the treasury for gold. People here 
soon began to join in the fear of the foreign bond- 
holders that government could not continue to pay 
gold, and, remembering the war experience with the 
greenbacks, began to expect that the silver dollar 
and most of the government paper money would fall 
in value, so that a man with a dollar due him could 
really get but fifty cents. 

365 rH Business This made business dull, loans difficult 
suffers. Q^Yid money scarce. A large share of busi- 

ness is done on borrowed money and credit sales, and 
people were afraid to lend a dollar or give credit for 
one, when there was a large chance of getting only 
fifty cents back. This led to the stopping of many 
works, shutting of many mills, and dullness among the 
dealers. All this threw many people out of employ- 



374 l'^^ Promotion of Convenience. [365 b 

ment. True, the bankers and merchants could have 
lent gold and sold goods under an agreement to get 
back gold, but people will not bother with such details in 
365 rcj Kansas ordm.di.vY transactions, and moreover, the 
tries a 'new way State of Kausas oucc declared such agree- 
0/ biee ing . ments illegal, and other states might do 
the same : so people did not like the risk. Moreover, 
when business is bad, people who really want to pay 
back just what they get, may not be able to. 
365 w. Hoarding Not Only was business dull, but money 
begins. ^^g gcarcc. Many people getting money in 

hand, did not put it in business or in the banks, where 
it could be lent out, but locked it up. They were 
afraid that the banks might be able to get back only 
light-weight silver dollars where they had lent gold 
ones, and would break; and people also feared that 
if they did not put the money in banks, but bought 
property, if business got disturbed by poor money, the 
property might shrink in value so that they could 
not get the money out again. 

It is by no means exclusively the 

and the l^or!'^"^^ moncy of the rich that goes if the banks 

fail. A large part of all the money in 

banks, is in the savings-banks, and that is almost entirely 

the money of the poor (141). 

Popular fear for the safety of banks and investments 
grows with what it feeds upon, until it becomes a 
regular panic, when people are so afraid of a fall in 
prices, that they begin to throw away their stocks and 
bonds for anything they will bring. In the panic of '93, 
people threw away their stocks and bonds at great 
sacrifices. The President called a special 
ltopi^the^i:^"nicl"^ scssion of Congrcss, and, after great trouble, 
got enacted a law repealing the require- 
ment passed under the previous administration, that the 
treasury should buy four million five hundred thousand 
ounces of silver a month. 

The absurdity of the repealed law has been strikingly 
illustrated in the fact that notwithstanding the increase 
in population and business — the latter especially after 



§366] Money — Some American Experience. 375 

1903, the supply of silver that the government had 
accumulated before it stopped buying in 1893, obviated 
the necessity of buying any more for the mints until 
August, 1906. 

Tho that silver was l^^ing idle in the treasury, in a 
sense it was not idle: for, being paid for in notes of the 
treasury, it was a guarantee for these notes (378). But 
its fluctuating price made it a very unsteady guarantee, 
and each month's purchases of silver increased the notes 
and, consequently, the danger that they could be 
redeemed only in the silver. Such uncertain banking 
showed our government to be controlled either by 
lunatics or by men who would stop at nothing to sell 
their silver, and this did as much to hurt our credit, and 
lead the Europeans to sell our securities, as did the 
mere fear that the treasury could not pay gold for all 
its notes. 

Stopping the silver purchases stopped the panic. In 
spite of the blows business had been stunned by, within 
three months people, from their hoards, increased the 
money in the national banks ten per cent., not to speak 
of what went into savings-banks, state banks and private 
banks; but even after President Cleveland stopped 
the panic, business did not revive for a year or more, 
until he had been obliged to buy gold at heavy rates 
to pay government notes with, and pay for the gold in 
government bonds, and had satisfied people that he 
would do so whenever necessary. Then factories started 
up, wages increased, wheat and cotton advanced in 
price, and everything looked hopeful. 

Yet it was frightfully expensive for 
"hlaufcJ^st! "' President Cleveland to redeem the token- 
money with gold bought by government 
bonds. But he did it because the notes were out, 
366. Government ^^^ Congress was not wise or honest 
Banking. enough to pay them off and burn them up. 

Consequently when anybody wanted gold for foreign 
shipment or the arts, instead of going to a dealer for 
it, and paying a little commission, he went to the govern- 
ment and got it without commission — that is to say: 



376 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 366 

at the expense of all the people. In other words, it 
was at the expense of the people that the greenbacks 
were kept in circulation, in order that government 
might do, without charge, the business of the very 
"goldbug" that the ignorant voter so hates. 

The law does not directly oblige the government to 
do all this brokerage business. But it was not avoided, 
because it was much less expensive to do it than it would 
have been to repeat the panic of '93. We have had to 
pay for letting people who had silver for sale, fool 
ignorant voters into the belief that if they would only 
use half the value of silver that the}^ did of gold, in a 
dollar, they could have twice as many dollars, and all 
of them just as good. 

The hopefulness occasioned by Mr. 
367. "16 to 1." Cleveland's policy, continued until the 
silver men again began to agitate for the 
presidential election of '96, and to demand unlimited 
coinage of a legal-tender dollar, whose weight should 
bear, to that of a gold dollar, the ratio of "16 to i ". 
This they made their campaign motto. The ratio of 
actual value was about 32 to i. Fear of the success 
of this scheme made things dull again. Its defeat 
restored confidence, and the country entered upon the 
greatest period of prosperity it has ever known — one 
that even the Spanish and Philippine wars could inter- 
rupt but for a moment. But even the defeat of the 
silverites in '96 did not restore confidence immediately, 
because the treasury gold for redeeming silver dollars 
remained for some time scant; and the laws were so 
indefinite that the government might be thrown upon 
a silver basis by any great financial disturbance, such 
as those Mr. Cleveland had issued bonds against. People 
felt afraid to invest dollars v/orth gold, in enterprises 
that might pay them only dollars worth silver. So 
business continued dull until 1898. Then the enormous 
mechanical genius of our people had been gradually 
enabling us to send Europe many manufactured articles 
cheaper than they could be made there. Altho our 



§ 369] Money — Some American Experience. 377 

high tariff makes prices here higher than in Europe, 
many of our manufacturers are selHng to Europe at 
low prices, because they must compete there. Yet they 
sell here at high ones, because the tariff shuts out 
European competition, and puts the difference collected 
out of our people, into the manufacturers' pockets , 
All this is despite the elaborate theory worked out 
when we were treating of distribution — that competi- 
tion and weak producers keep prices down, and it well 
illustrates one beauty of "Protection": to the extent 
of the duty, and at the expense of the rest of the people, 
the government "protects" the manufacturer from the 
necessity of competition, and the danger of incom- 
petency; but ai the same time it "protects" (?) the 
public from the advantages of competition (146-148 d) 
and makes us more open to the dangers of incompetency. 

ocQ I A But to return to our light -silver-dollar 

000. Improved . t~> • n a 1 

trade.balance experience, isusmess conndence began to 

supp les gold. appear again in 1898. Despite the danger- 
ous state of the law, two causes sent us enormous 
quantities of gold : our manufacturers had begun to sell 
increasing quantities in Europe, and we had enorm.ous 
crops in '97 and '98 which a scarcity in Europe compelled 
people there to pay us high prices for. These agencies 
filled our treasury so that it seemed safe against any 
accident in sight. 

But suppose our crops were to fail for a couple of 
seasons, and Europe were to have good ones, or find 
good ones in Asia, Africa or Australia ; and suppose, too, 
that Germany, with her splendid technical education, 
were to drive our manufacturers out of Europe, our gold- 
369 But th t supply would probably run down to the 
cannot be depended point where Mr. Cleveland had to sell bonds 
"'^°"' to increase it, and we might be rushed again 

to the brink of national bankruptcy — or over the brink. 
But we have now a defence against that, in the Act of 
March 19, 1900, which declares it to be the country's 
policy to pay gold, and provides by legislation the 
means for doing it which Mr. Cleveland took the respon- 
sibility of providing himself. Yet tho that act declares 



378 The Promotion of Convenience. [§369 

it the policy of the country to keep all its money on a 
par with gold, it does not prescribe any method for 
doing so, or put the responsibility for doing so on any- 
body's shoulders ; it leaves room to pay in silver, current 
expenses of the government averaging over $1,500,000 
a day, and $700,000,000 bonds, principal and interest, 
and fastens no responsibility to redeem that silver 
on anybody. A secretary of the treasury could do it 
if he wished, or he could find abundant pretexts for 
not doing it. A President could order him to do it or 
not to do it. What is of more importance : any declara- 
tion of Congress can easily be set aside by a future Con- 
gress, if elected by the people to do so. Despite the 
Act of March, 1900, the Democratic nominations later 
in the year threatened as much as those of 1896. They 
distinctly interrupted business, but the enormous re- 
vival after their defeat, shows that at least the people 
able to conduct business, at last understand the matter. 
The election of 1900 confirmed the favorable outlook, 
and in that of 1904, money questions were no longer a 
distinct issue. But they are apt to crop up again, espe- 
cially when the hard experience we have recounted grad- 
ually drops out of memory. The silver craze was not 
the first time that people have attempted to get rich in 
some such way, nor will it be the last. The ignorant 

are all the while trying some such decep- 
370. Light-weight tive Scheme for getting rich by magic, 
aellf scheme! "^ Soon after the war, when it was proposed 

to pay off the greenbacks, and even when 
the confidence that they would be paid had brought 
them back to even value, from a value of forty gold 
dollars for a hundred greenback ones, there were still 
people who objected to having the greenbacks paid, 
and wanted enough more issued to fill evey man's 
pockets. There was no explanation of how these 
people expected to get the greenbacks into every man's 
pockets, or of why they would not be as well off if they 
would set to work and get a corresponding amount 
of gold into their pockets. Work did not enter into 
their calculations. They had a thousand schemes, all 



§37o] Money — Some American Experience. 379 

of which disguised some plan for really making the 
government give greenbacks to all who wanted them; 
and of course they did not realize that doing so would 
make the greenbacks as worthless as the Colonial and 
Confederate money. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

MONEY (continued). 

Needs for the Future. 

Despots have sometimes made themselves rich by 
debasing the currency and making the people take 
it at full value; but not often, if ever before, have a 
people thought, like many of ours, that they could get 
rich by debasing their own currency. Of course the 
best safeguard against all such schemes among the 
people, is not to have ignorant voters. But probably 
371. The best ^^t many men in America — white men at 
safeguard. least — will ever be deprived of their votes. 

So our only way of having no ignorant voters is to 
educate them so there will be no ignorant. What most 
needs to be taught about money, is that there is no 
way to make a dohar good for a hundred cents' worth 
of anything else, but by putting a hundred cents' worth 
of something into the dollar itself, or by being ready 
at a moment's notice to give a hundred cents' worth 
of something for it. These methods are not equally 
convenient : for it is much easier to handle considerable 
amounts in paper than in coin, or to handle a silver 
dollar holding only fifty cents' worth of silver, than to 
handle one twice as heavy. 

Nor are the two methods equally safe. Silver prob- 
ably deceives more. Perfect safety lies in having the 
full value in the dollar itself: then no misfortune or 
foolishness or rascality can depreciate it. After all, there 

380 



§ 374] Money — Needs for the Future. 381 

372. The safest is no absolutely safe material for money, 
"^o"ey. because new discoveries may reduce the 

value of gold itself; but gold is the safest there is, 
and safe enough for ordinary practice. But, as already 
suggested, that would make handling large sums so 
inconvenient, that the world is agreed to sacrifice ideal 
safety for real convenience. 

Balancing the conA^enience of paper money or light 
silver money, against its dangers, what is the best 
money depends on a good many things. Silver has 
373 P b tt some intrinsic value, which the paper has 
than light-weight not, and it has vastly more durability; 
®''^®''' but on the other hand, the lack of dura- 

bility in paper does not count for much, as it is easy 
to issue a new note for a spoiled one. But the very 
fact that silver has some intrinsic value, confuses igno- 
rant people, and even tends to make them dishonest. 
Paper is really much more honest money than silver: 
nobody can take it for anything which it is not. The 
use of it in this country has brought great losses and 
disasters, but the country has learned a great deal 
from them. The people could not long have been fooled 
with paper as they have been fooled with silver. 
Paper has not brought any trouble in England in 
recent times; but there, ignorant people are much 
more under the influence of people of education than 
they are here, and England has no paper money under 
twenty-five dollars. 

Probably if there had been no green- 
fa^rg'e ^flls!^ '" backs under twenty-five dollars, most of 
the people who made trouble about them 
after the war, would have known so little about them 
that there would have been no trouble. Even if the 
money-schemes for making everybody rich, are started 
for selfish reasons by able men, and even if such men 
are able for a time to fool a few other able men new 
to the subject, the schemes depend for their principal 
following upon the people who have too little judg- 
ment to see twenty-five dollars often. The only thing 
to make our paper silver certificates safe under all 



382 The Promotion of Convenience. [§375 

probable conditions, is to put a dollar's 
siiver?er?iifc^a?es, worth of silver into the silver dollar, and 
call in all those which contain less. Simply 
to take away its legal-tender character, would con- 
tract the currency and destroy confidence, so that 
many people could not get money enough to pay their 
debts, and much bankruptcy would follow. It would 
contract the currency by two temporary strictures: 
first, people would be slow to accept silver dollars or 
silver certificates : so they would go to the treasury for 
redemption. Next, as the treasury is not at all likely 
to have enough other money to redeem them, it would 
have to pay out bonds to meet part of them, and the 
currency it would take in place of bonds would make 
just that much less for business use, until it should 
be paid out again. It would destroy confidence, be- 
cause, the treasury gold supply being gone to redeem 
the silver currency and certificates, the treasury would 
be in the condition of a man without money in his 
pockets or in bank. He might need it before he would 
have time to borrow it, and, if everybody knew his 
plight, would probably have to borrow at heavy ex- 
pense, as Mr. Cleveland did. 

To redeem the silver currency in new legal-tender 
greenbacks, would meet most of the difficulties, if 
government had gold on hand to pay the greenbacks 
as wanted. But there is a difficulty that it would not 
376. Objections nieet : the use of greenbacks keeps the 
to ail government government in the banking business, and 
"°^®^' as long as it is, the money system of the 

country is under the control of politics, and subject 
to the attacks of the politicians which have kept busi- 
ness disturbed for over forty years, since government 
went into that business during the civil war. 

Yet government can be got out of the banking busi- 
ness without diminishing the volume of money, and so 
contracting the currency. The notes of private banks, 
properly regulated, could replace the government notes, 
and there is no objection to the government continuing 
to coin money (if it coins only honest money) as the Con- 



§ 377 ^] Money — Needs for the Future, 383 

stitution requires: so it is only necessary to provide 
for that portion of the money which is not coin, or, 
at least, not honest coin. The government mints can- 
not supply all the money needed, for several reasons: 
377. Yet coin in- i^ the first place, prices depend on the 
sufficient, amount of money in circulation, and are 

now fixed on a basis of much more money than the 
coin ; to get back to coin by retiring the other money, 
even gradually, would contract prices so that a corpora- 
tion having to pay a million dollars' worth of bonds fifty 
years hence, would find a million dollars of its assets, at 
present values, fallen to probably a third of that price, 
while its debts would not have shrunk at all : that means 
inability to pay them. But instead of getting down to 
the coin we have, why not let government coin more, as 
fast as it retires light silver and its other bad money? 
Because the demand for so much more gold would 
raise its price, so that the farmer and manufacturer 
and miner and laborers of all kinds would have to 
give more of their products to enable the government 
to get gold — taxes would rise. Another objection 
377 (a) and resulting from, or at least closely con- 

ineiastic, nectcd with, the last, is that currency 

only in coin is very inelastic. It is impossible- to buy 
much gold, especially suddenly, without raising the 
price (that is to say: making it exchange for more 
of other things) ; and conversely, it is of course impos- 
sible to throw much onto the market, in coin or in 
any other shape, without lowering the price (that is 
to say : making it exchange for less of other things) : 
so it would be very hard to keep a coin currency just 
equal to the varying needs of business. 

Moreover, an exclusively coin currency is extravagant. 
To have enough gold for active times, would mean 
to keep it idle in inactive times, and so lose interest 
377 (b). and eats OTL it. Busiuess rcquircs an elastic cur- 
up interest rcucy : whilc Nature and men are taking 

their winter rest — no crops produced, little building 
and mining, little travel — there is little business, and 
little currency is needed. In the spring, as things 



384 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 377 ^ 

wake up, more is needed, and as fall approaches, 
and the farmer has to pay labor to gather his crops, 
and the dealer has to pay the farmer, and the rail- 
roads and merchants are busy with the crops, a great 
deal more money is kept in use. A mere coin currency 
cannot expand and contract to meet these conditions. 
An exclusively coin currency, then, is open to many 
objections that can be met only by a paper cur- 
rency. And yet the burden of our song has been 
that a paper currency is dangerous. But it is not 
dangerous if the people generally can be made to 

„^o f. . realize that it is: because then it would 

378. Good paper , , -, r \ 

currency pref- be taken care 01. A paper currency is 

^""^ safe if its promise to pay is certain; and 

dangerous only if, as in the civil war, it cannot be 

redeemed in coin when required. 

Beside the reasons already given for not letting the 
coin go into use at once, instead of keeping it to redeem 
the paper, is the very important one that experience 
has shown that it is safe, even in ordinary banking, to 
let out four dollars of paper for every dollar of coin in 
hand. If people know that the banker has a reason- 
able amount of coin and other value to meet the paper, 
not all of the paper would ever be presented for redemp- 
tion at once. People are like the Dutchman who got 
frightened and went to the bank for his money. As- 
soon as it was offered him, he told them to keep it: 
"Ven you got him, I no vant him: ven you don't 
got him, I vant him." 

It is not meant to imply that it is safe for a bank 
worth a hundred thousand dollars to issue notes for 
four hundred thousand: nobody should have out obli- 
gations greater than assets, but rather considerably less, 
to leave a margin for accidents. But if a bank has out 
four hundred thousand of notes, and no other obliga- 
tion, it can safely keep all of its property above one 
hundred thousand, in marketable bonds or good com- 
mercial paper or any other good "quick" (i.e., quickly 
sellable) security that will pay it interest. If it can 
lend four hundred thousand dollars, and get interest 



§ 380] Money — Needs for the Future. 385 

on it, by keeping one hundred thousand dollars idle 
in its vaults, that one hundred thousand will really 
be earning fourfold interest; and that, with the in- 
terest on the three hundred thousand in securities, 
makes the bank get interest on seven hundred thousand 
while it has a capital of only four hundred thousand. 
Out of this, however, it must pay expenses, and unless 
it manages well, it may have no profit after all. 

It may very naturally be asked: Why then should 
not all the people participate in this advantage, in the 
shape of lowered taxation, by keeping the government 
in the banking business of issuing notes? For the 
same reason that, as we saw (236 h, 236 c), 
lovermrient?* ^'^'^'^ government should not be put in the 
manufacturing business. It would leave 
to politicians with pulls, the work that should be done 
by men fitted for it by nature, and put in place by 
natural selection; and it would take away from the 
community the enormous advantage of having its 
banking done by such men under the stimulus of com- 
petition and personal reward. 

A word more regarding the elasticity of the paper 
currency. Of course the bank must lend this cur- 
rency in order to get interest on it. When the country 
is very busy, people will borrow it all; when business 
is dull they will not need it, and will pay their maturing 
notes, and the bank will have to take its currency back. 
Then, of course, it fails to gain interest on it, and on 
its idle coin too ; but the paper costs nothing. 

380. Essentials of Notwithstanding all that has been said 
banknotes. "Wild- in favor of a non-government paper cur- 
cat' money. rency, the country has tried private bank- 
notes, and found them wanting. But this was largely 
because they were issued on the authority of individual 
states, and especially of some of the newer states, 
where political organization was very primitive, and the 
regulations were primitive and primitively enforced. 
If anybody proposes to put paper in general circulation, 
it is essential that it should be done under conditions 



386 The Promotion of Convenience. ' [§ 380 

to protect against general harm. Under the imperfect 
conditions alluded to, a great many notes were spread 
over the country without enough coin and other assets 
behind them to make them safe ; and many of the notes 
from the poorer and more provincial banks were so 
poorly engraved and printed that it was easy to counter- 
feit them. As a result, nobody knew whether most of 
the money offered him was good or not. People were 
constantly getting "stuck" with bad notes, as they 
sometimes are with pewter coin. It became worth 
while to issue frequent pamphlets — " Banknote Guides ", 
"Counterfeit Detectors", etc., etc., and every shop- 
keeper had to keep one, and before accepting money 
that he did not know well, turn to his pamphlet for 
description and advice. 

One of the good things blown by the ill winds of 
the great civil war and its depreciated greenbacks, 
was the disappearance of the old "rag money": they 
blew it out of circulation. Everybody understood a 
greenback, it was the same thing the country over — ■ 
well made (even if ugly) and hard to counterfeit. Tho it 
was worth at one time but forty cents on a dollar, people 
knew what it was worth without turning to a " Guide ' ' 
or ' ' Detector ", and soon it drove the private rag money 
out of existence. That, by the way, was an apparent 
(but only apparent) contradiction of the famous ' ' Gresh- 
am's law", that the worse money always drives out 
the better. But it cannot be gone into farther here. 
To summarize our conclusions regarding the country's 
needs. In the first place, there is always a need of 
plenty of money — more even, when business is brisk, 
than all the gold coin in the country. In the second 
place, it should be supplied under regulations from the 
United States Government, not the state governments, 
so that the money will be the same throughout the 
country. 

The regulations should be: first, secure 

a^sounnystem°^ ^^^^* nobody not of proved character and 

ability can start a bank of issue; second, 

that no more notes shall be issued than there are good 



§ 382] Money — Needs for the Future, 387 

quick assets (377 &) on hand for redemption of, at least 
one fourth of wliich assets shall be gold coin; third, that 
these notes shall conform to some good definite standards 
of workmanship — perhaps that they shall be provided 
by government; only, as we have seen and shall see 
further, we need to be very cautious in what we trust 
government to provide ; (The mere mechanical furnishing 
of these notes would not, of course, be "going into the 
banking business";) fourth, that a limit for ordinary 
issues shall be fixed, and all beyond that limit taxed 
so as to force their retirement when not really needed; 
fifth, that each bank shall have arrangements for 
redemption at several centres, so as to facilitate retire- 
ment; sixth, that government examiners shall visit the 
banks unannounced, at frequent intervals, to see that 
the regulations are complied with; seventh, that such 
penalties shall follow infringement of regulations as to 
make infringement extremely improbable. 

There are those who favor a single central bank 
of issue, as is virtually the case in England; but that 
does not seem adapted to our large country, and there 
are other objections which cannot be gone into here. 
Humanity is not wise enough and careful enough yet 
to make us sure that any arrangements are going to 
work perfectly; but under those suggested, the law of 
demand and supply would probably keep the currency 
as nearly adjusted to requirements as anything is at the 
present stage of human progress. If there were not 
enough, the demand for more would make profits great 
enough to tempt more people into issuing it; and if 
there were too much, the portion uncalled for would be 
retired, and the capital behind it be turned into things 
in more demand. 

Under present arrangements the bank 
382. Basis^for an cannot issue more, because when there is 
e as ic currency. ^ demand for more, the only thing back 
of our present banknotes is United States bonds, 
which are admirable as far as they go, but they do 
not go far enough — there are not enou,8:h of them, and 
they pay very low interest; besides, if a bank wants 



383 The Promotion of Convenience. [§382 

to enlarge its circulation now, it must go through an 
enormous amount of red tape, including buying a lot 
of government bonds, and sending to Washington for 
notes, and waiting till they are engraved. While all 
this is going on, a panic could wreak destruction. It 
would therefore be well to substitute for United States 
bonds, all securities in the country that an able commis- 
sion (best, perhaps, appointed b}^ the banks themselves) 
should pronounce safe for the purpose (they would 
not be a very large proportion of the whole), such 
commission to revise its list at frequent intervals, and 
banks to shift their securities accordingly. 

Then to get the notes into circulation, it would only 
be necessary for any man who has the securities, to 
take them to bank and borrow banknotes on them 
up to within a reasonable ' limit of their face value ; 
then when his need is over, he could take the notes 
back and get his securities. 

Commercial paper of high quality would not be 
available to base the notes on, even tho there is more 
of it when business is brisk, and less when business is 
slow, because it would be very difficult to be sure that 
such paper, when offered, was for actual goods sold; 
and an elastic currency would lead to inflation of values 
unless it were carefully limited to a basis of actual 
property. So far as currency might be based on 
accommodation paper, it would, of course, be pure 
inflation, and might go on until it should collapse 
like an exploded balloon. But even if it were based 
on genuine commercial paper, the producer of raw 
material might get currency on the note given him 
by the manufacturer, the manufacturer might get it 
on his jobber's note, the jobber on the retailer's, and 
the retailer — a grocer, for instance, on the consumer's; 
so the same raw material might originate currency 
four times — on the notes received by the banks from 
the raw-material man, the manufacturer, the jobber 
and the retailer; value added by the manufacturer 
might originate currency three times — on his jobber's 
note, and the retailer's and the consumer's; the job- 



§ s^s a] Money — Needs for the Future. 389 

ber's service, twice; and the retailer's, once — an aggre- 
gate of ten issues of currency where there would be a 
sound basis for only three actual values accumulated — ■ 
the raw material, the manufacturer's, the jobber's. 
It seems therefore that a safe issue of currency based 
on commercial paper would be practically impossible. 
The retailer's note could not represent a value to 
base currency on: because even if the goods in con- 
sumers' hands are not — like food, actually destroyed, 
their commercial value as a basis for currency, is gone 
as soon as they are in consumers' hands. Even if 
they endure, like furniture or jewelry, they at once 
become "second-hand". 

383. The farmer's In the foregoing analysis, by the way, 
"eeds the farmer's demand that he shall have a 

chance too, as well as the "bloated bondholder" — 
that currency shall be issued based on his farm, not 
merely on coin, or even on bonds that can be sold at a 
moment's notice on the stock exchanges, is counter to 
the requirement that the currency shall be based on 
quick assets. His land, or even a mortgage on it, 
cannot be sold for full value at a moment's notice, if 
there should be a run on the bank to redeem its notes 
in gold. 

This brings up the serious question of how to sup- 
ply the demand for money in thinly-settled regions 
where there are no banks — where, according to stories 
we hear, a man sometimes rides around a whole day 
in a vain effort to get a fifty-dollar bill changed; and a 

man on being asked if he could change a 
lwV!oof<out'^ "^'^ ten-dollar bill, answered : "I never had so 

much money in my life, but thank you for 
the compliment, all the same." In the first place, 
the reason for lack of money in such regions, is 
generally (not always) the same as for the lack of it 
anywhere else — the people have not the wealth to base 
it on, or the ability to make the wealth — in fifty-dollar 
bills which they cannot change, or in any other shape: 
the regions are generally poverty-stricken, and the 



390 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 383 a 

attempt to give them plenty of money by putting a 
bankful of it among them, would do no more good 
than to put a bankful among the New York tene- 
ments: the people cannot get the money unless they 
have something to exchange or pledge for it. Even if 
the farmers wanted to mortgage their farms to a new 
bank, often they could not do it, because the farms are 
often mortgaged already. 

Still, there are places where people really have 
good farms and crops, but not enough money for ordi- 
nary needs. But it would be odd if such regions had 
the resources to establish banks, and the need for 
them, and still went v/ithout them. So their demand 
for banks still looks like one more form of the cry that 
assumes so many forms — for government to supply 
money to those who cannot supply themselves. 
383 (b) Remed ^^^ there are places to which it would 

for legitimate be wcU for banks elscwhcre to send 
"^^^^' branches. That is actually done in some 

countries— in Scotland and Canada, for instance: a 
city bank will get a country storekeeper to start a 
little branch, supplying him with money and elaborate 
instructions based on experience; and such a branch is 
often a very good thing for everybody concerned. 

Apparently the serious want is in places too small 

for even our 'new banks with $25,000 capital. Little 

agencies seem to be still wanted. A few of them wisely 

• distributed undoubtedly would silence all reasonable 

calls for "more money". 

Two things can be done to facilitate that — enable 
banks, by law, to establish branches; and take off 
the taxation— from small ones at least. The general 
government does not get enough from bank taxation 
to make it worth bothering with anyhow. It is one 
of the pottering taxes that ought to be cleared out of 
the way. It yields only a half of one per cent, of the 
national income. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

PUBLIC WORKS. 

Extra-Municipal. 

So much for Money. Probably the next item of 
popular convenience evolved by government, and one 
over which government care is almost equally taken 
for granted, is roads of some sort; but as already inti- 
384 Roads mated, the kind and degree of care that 

government should take of the new forms 
of roads — railroads and city railways, is open to much 
debate. 

Regarding the immense importance of roads, there 
is a very early and very authoritative piece of testi- 
ZU (ah As spread- r^onj. The Romans were the greatest 
ing civilization. road-buildcrs and — a very suggestive fact 
in the connection — the greatest spreaders of civilization 
the world ever saw before our own race took hold. 
The proconsul who was probably the most famous 
advancer of Roman civilization in barbarous regions, 
when asked what was the first thing he provided a 
new country with, answered: ** Roads"; "And the 
next thing?" "More roads"; "And then.?" "Still 
more roads." 

As the importance of roads bears on many civic 
questions, we will consider them more fully than some 
other topics which at first seem nearer the centre 
of civic relations. The Romans, in carrying out this 
principle, put roads through most of continental 
Europe west of Russia and south of Scandinavia, and 

391 



392 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 384 a 

even into Great Britain — many of which are highways 
of civiHzation to this day. Thesfe were far from being 
private enterprises: they were primarily the work of 
miHtary engineers to faciHtate the movements of 
armies — good out of an ill wind. 

As between private work and govern- 
f?V.t^lJ,^°'"^'°" ment work, the general evolution of road- 

If] 014/ fdUU - ^-^ 

making by our race, has been somewhat 
as follows: at first in England, and after the settle- 
ment here, and in some rural regions to this day, 
everybody has had to give some days every year to 
road-making, or furnish a substitute. This was by 
degrees commuted into money, just as military service 
was (56a), and road-makers were hired by the govern- 
ment, as soldiers were. 

Passage was generally free over roads thus made ; tho 
as cities grew up, both in the old home and here, govern- 
ment not only itself improved roads between them, but 
also chartered private corporations to do it; a.nd on 
these roads, tolls were generally charged. As the 
Romans were the best road-makers among the great 
nations, it may be interesting to note that the worst 
are unquestionably "our noble selves". The reason 
was our expansion over great tracts of new country 
before good roads had time to grow up, and hence the 
habit of putting up with poor ones. Later, when we 
wanted better things, improvement has been much 
blocked by bad organization and corrupt local govern- 
ment. 

384 re;. Bad Amen- Government road-making may be con- 
can organization, sidered established. But American or- 
ganization has been left too much to local control. 
Outside of unmistakable city and village streets (and 
possibly inside of them), it should be a state function; 
and it is far from certain that it should not be a na- 
tional function. Every important road must extend 
through poor and thinly populated towns and counties, 
as well as rich ones. The poor ones are not able to 
keep their roads up to a good standard, nor is it fair 
that they should: for they really do not use them as 



§ 385] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 393 

much as do the people of more populous adjoining 
towns. Moreover, the poor road-making thus forced 
on the poor towns is not confined to them alone, but 
tends to become the standard for their neighbors. 

These difficulties are more effectual with us than 
with other civilized nations, because our ancestral spirit 
cf local independence — our desires to govern our home 
affairs ourselves, our objection to submitting them to 
the more remote state and national governments, is so 
strong that many consider it the very basis of Anglo- 
Saxon liberty. Even in such a town as Concord, Massa- 
chusetts, quite possibly the most enlightened rural town 
in the world (and consequently one of the most wealthy "^ 
part of a magnificent boulevard intended to run from 
one end of the state to the other was bitterly opposed 
because: "This town has always been able to manage 
its own roads. " • 

Yet while Anglo-Saxon local independence obstructs 
roads so much, England has splendid ones, because our 
English cousins are more thickly crowded; their roads 
are older than ours; and they are near such good ex- 
amples in France and Switzerland. Relative wealth 
cannot affect the matter much as regards our older 
and richer states: for they are rich enough; but our 
national wastefulness and extravagance have a good 
deal to do with it. Few things are more wasteful and 
extravagant than poor roads : in any ordinary civilized 
region, they waste more, over and over again, in horse- 
flesh, wagon-wear, and time of man and beast, than 
good roads would cost. 

Tolls are not generally charged now, tho there are 
some survivals. But in most cases governments have 
abandoned the tolls on their own roads, supporting them 
b}^ taxation, and have also acquired the private toll- 
roads by eminent domain, and thrown the toll-gates 
open. 

The experience in this regard with bridges has been 

gg. g . about the same as with roads ; yet the 

'"' ^^^' greatest and newest of the great bridges — ■ 



394 



The Promotion of Convenience . [§ 385 a 



those between New York and Brooklyn, tho built by 
the city governments, still take toll. But there is 
prospect of its speedy abolishment. Yet at first sight, 
it does not seem fair that the vast majority of the resi- 
dents of the Greater New York, who do not use the 
bridges half a dozen times a year, and hundreds of 
thousands of them who do not use them at all, should 
pay as much as those who use them twice or oftener 
every day. But the argument carried out with stern 
logic, would put a toll-gatherer at every bridge in the 
country, and very few people want that done. As long 
as each man has a right to the free use of such a general 
and important pubhc convenience when he wants it, as 
long as the cost for each person is a trifle, and the 
indirect benefit to every person, whether he uses it 
or not, is great, the question whether one man wants 
it more than another, is one of those trifles which the 
law does not bother itself with.* 

386. Regulation Roads and bridges in a sense operate 

^_ Winers ip. pera- -j^j^g^ggiygg^ i^^i now it is time to take 

special note that as we come to facilities requiring 
operation, there are three relations which government 
can occupy toward public facilities — regulation, owner- 
ship and operation, and neither of the first two involves 
a later one. It is especially important to keep in mind 
the last two as distinct: much mischief is done by 
confusing them. There is a wide and intelligent senti- 
ment in favor of government ownership of franchises, 
especially in cities, in order that their unearned incre- 
ment, often very large, may go to the people instead 
of private monopolists. And there is even a more 
intelligent, and consequently, of course, less wide 
sentiment that under the universal suffrage pervading 
American and French cities alone, the operation of 
the franchises is a task too heavy for the political 
capacity. During the Hearst campaign which dis- 

* De minimis non curat lex. 



I 



I 387 a] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 395 

graced New York City in 1905, the cry of his sup- 
porters was "municipal ownership", while Vv'hat they 
really meant was municipal operation; and the confu- 
sion of terms drew to their ranks and even their ticket, 
many of the foggy-minded sentimentalists who are 
too ready to sympathize with any cause containing 
a grain of wheat, tho its main constituents be 
chaff. 

387. Ferries and ^G shall reach more definite applica- 

docks. tions of the principles just enumerated 

as we go on. Let us begin by noticing that ferries 
require infinitely more management than roads and 
bridges. Yet government has operated them several 
times in Great Britain, and occasionally in Germany, 
but very seldom in America. In 1904 London took 
over the Thames steamboats. By 1906 they showed 
a heavy loss. Of the government ferries, some are 
free and some are not. Boston charges for one, but 
runs it at a loss. Glasgow makes a big profit on hers. 
The one over the Thames at Woolwich is supposed to 
perform the service that bridges do higher up the 
stream, and like them is free. In 1905 New York took 
over the Staten Island ferry, but so far with very un- 
387 ra;. Municipal Satisfactory results. If reports the world 
and Private ovcr cau be relied upon, there is nothing 

contracts. ,• i • ji i • r j. 

exceptional m the snowing or government 
extravagance given by the following figures from the 
New York City statistician in 1906, and showing the 
monthly salary items of the ferries run by the munici- 
pality, in comparison with those for the ferry under 
private management at Thirty-ninth Street, Brooklyn, 
and the one run in New York Harbor by the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company. It is claimed that the munici- 
pal ferryboats are so much larger as to require some 
officers that the Railroad Company's boats do not. The 
city employs three crews a day; the Railroad Company, 
two. I am not, however, advocating that method of 
economy: for the indications are strong that it does 
not result economically. 



396 The Promotion of Convenience, [§ 387 a 

^,•4.,, 30th St. Penna. 

^"y- Ferry. R. R. 

Captain $137.50 $135.00 $130.00 

Quartermaster 100.00 None 55- 00 

Deckhand. . 60 . 00 55 • 00 49 • 50 

Porter. 55 • 00 40 . 00 49 • 50 

Engineer 125.00 120.00 120.00 

Assistant engineer 125.00 None 82 . 50 

Oiler 90 . 00 None 77 . 00 

Water-tender 100 . 00 None 66 . 00 

Fireman 90 . 00 65 . 00 66 . 00 

Attendant 50 . 00 None None 

Mate 75 • 00 None None 

Ashman. . 76 . 00 52-50 49 • 50 

The franchises (159 c) of American ferries have not 
generally been given away. Even in New York, where 
the exceptionally valuable street-railway franchises 
were once given away freely, the ferry franchises have 
usually been sold for terms of years to the highest 
bidders. Docks in Liverpool, Glasgow, Hamburg and 
many other European cities, have been splendidly and 
profitably provided and cared for by the local goverri- 
ments. In the United States they are generally inferior, 
tho they are rapidly improving. We shall see some gen- 
eral reasons for this inferiority later; but at best, docks 
are used by so small a portion of the people that they 
are not under as general criticism as most municipal 
conveniences (389 /, 392 c), and their management is 
therefore peculiarly liable to be stupid and corrupt.* 

Now to come to the modern modifica- 

■ ^'™^ ^' tion of roads — the railroads. f Regarding 

them, it is not fair to compare the United States as a 

whole with any other great nation exclu- 

"i^^ (a). Superioy sivc of its colonics, bccausc most of the 

service in America tt -.^ j o.*. j. • 4-i • i -l-^^ j T-C 

and England. United btatcs IS vcry thinly settled, it we 

consider only the parts of our own country 

* Treating ferries and docks as extra-municipal may need 
defence, but so would treating them as municipal. 

t In treating this subject, I have been under great obligations 
to Professor Daniels' "Elements of Public Finance", and to 
Professor Seager's Economics, tho not as great as, perhaps, 
the concurrence of our views would indicate. 



§ 3^8 6] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 397 

as thickly settled as other civilized countries, the five 
greatest nations in the order of the frequency, speed 
and comfort of their railroad trains, unquestionably 
would be: the United States, England, France, Ger- 
many, Italy. The order with reference to degree of 
private ownership would be very nearly the same: 
in England and the United States, the ownership and 
management are virtually entirely private. In France 
the government owns part of the roads, and leases them 
to private companies, who run them; in Germany, 
where the government attends in a paternal way to 
more things than government does in any other great 
nation, it both owns and runs nearly all the railroads; 
and so also in Italy until the government leased its 
roads to private companies — partly because it recog- 
nized the roads as sources of political corruption. 

„„„ , , , But the Italian leases, after twenty years, 

388 (b). Italy. .... . , .., , , -^-6 T ■ 

tell m m 1905. A bill came before Parlia- 
ment to have government resume the running of the 
roads. It was backed by the employees, who believed, 
from the traditions of the previous government control, 
that they would have an easier time under it than under 
private companies. This belief was probably correct, 
but it virtually asserts the greater efficiency of private 
management. In vSupport of the bill, there was of course 
fermented a popular idea that the private managers were 
making too much money, and giving too little for what 
they got. Such an idea of any existing institution, of 
course always pervades the party of discontent. 

The matter was settled by government undertaking the 
operation. If it were not for the apparent impossibility, 
alluded to more than once in this volume, of getting 
unbiased testimony on such a subject, the result of 
this action on the part of the government would be 
plain in the following letter to the London Times: 



" Rome, Oct. 23 [igo6]. — The government ownership of rail- 
ways in Italy continues a menace to the life and limbs of those 
compelled to travel in this country. Another serious accident 
occurred yesterday, a passenger train running into a goods 



398 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 3886 

train near Turin. Sixteen passengers were hurt. The engine 
driver, station agent, and pointsman are in hiding. 

' ' It would seem that the disciphne of railway servants leaves 
something to be desired, and this no doubt is a factor in the 
general disorganization, of which complaint is made in all 
parts of the country. 

"Apart from all question of danger in railway traveling, Italy 
is made so wretchedly uncomfortable that visitors may well 
pause to consider whether the pleasure of being in Italy is worth 
the misery of being in Italian trains." 

^00 , , ^ But the German experience is really the 

Z^^ (c). Germany. i ^ • . -r • 

only one great enough to justify compari- 
son with ours. If we compare only the portion of 
the United States whose population is something like 
as dense as Germany's, in that portion we surpass 
Germany, partly because of the great inventiveness 
of the American people, partly because of their greater 
tendency to move about, and their having more money 
to do it with, but mainly because of the fact that 
American railway officials are in the business to make 
all they can out of it, and are stimulated by fierce 
competition between themselves and between their 
roads. Yet the American roads are falling off in 
efficiency because of trade-unionism among the men, 
and the interference of banking interests in the manage- 
ment. Still, the Germans are behind us because their 
railway officials are government employees at salaries 
not apt to be changed, and with all the routine indiffer- 
ence that everywhere characterizes the government 
employee with nothing to lose and nothing to gain. 
The fares, tho about the same in money as ours, are 
twice as high, compared with other things, as they are 
in the thickly settled portions of America, and the 
trains do not run half as often. 

At the Railway Congress in Washington in 1905 the 
German Ambassador said: "We do not recommend 
that you follow our example in the national ownership of 
railways." He probably meant the national operation: 
the ownership is a much more hopeful proposition. 
The government operation in Germany has failed in 
the particulars (among others) which our people, the 



§3^8 6^] Extra-Mtinicipal Public Works. 399 

President at the head, are clamoring for government to 
remedy here — in securing dissimilar rates under dissimi- 
lar circumstances — between long and short hauls, be- 
tween competing and non-competing points, between 
land and water competition, and between small custom- 
ers and large customers. 

An important point of comparison is the proportion of 
trunk lines opening up a variety of villages between 
central points, on the continent of Europe, as compared 
with England and America. In the countries of govern- 
ment roads, there is usually but one trunk-line between 
important points. In England and America, there are 
usually several, each opening up its own line of towns 
and villages, and all forcing each other, through com- 
petition, to the utmost economy and efficiency. 

Regarding comparison in charges for service between 
government roads and private roads in the same state, 
statistics are scarce and somewhat unreliable, because 
of the confusion between passengers of different classes, 
and because it is next to impossible to tell what a gov- 
ernment road really costs the people : fares may be eked 
out by taxation. 

American experience in government management 
amounts to very little. 

388 (d) Govern- '^^^ "^'^^^ °^ Cincinnati owns the Cincinnati 
ment opemtion Southcm Railway, but leases it to a 

in America, ■ , 

private company. 
The state of Missouri has had a little experience with 
railroads. Governor Folk is reported to have delivered 
himself substantially as follows on the day in 1906 after 
Mr. Bryan, at his home-coming reception in Madison 
Square Garden, had announced himself in favor of gov- 
ernment operation of the railroads : 

"Mr. Bryan's proposition for the taking over of railway lines 
by the national and state governments would be met with no 
acceptance in his [Gov. Folk's] state, where the experiment 
had been tried and found wanting. 

' ' Missouri had pled.sred her credit in subsidizing the lines . Prac- 
tical paralysis of traffic during the civil war forced defaults of 
interest payments on the bonds. Under the terms of the char- 
ters, whenever such default was made the state was empowc-red 



400 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 388<^ 

to sell the lines to the highest bidder, or to become itself the 
proprietor under the liens it held as guarantor. In this way 
all of the lines became the property of the state, with the 
exception of the Hannibal & St. Joseph, now a part of the 
Wabash system. 

"The state's mode of operation was for the governor to 
appoint a general superintendent or manager. Such appoint- 
ments were of course political. One of the first was that 
of J. T. K. Hayward of Hannibal as general superintendent of 
what was then called the Platte County Railroad. This was 
very near the close of the war, when the ravages of armies had 
ceased, commerce was reviving, and confidence returning. Traf- 
fic along these lines was increasing rapidly. 

"Yet every month showed a deficit in the finances of every 
line except the Hannibal & St. Joseph. Loaded down with 
political appointees lacking both railroad experience and natural 
efficiency, 'the [government] road was such a continuing burden 
to the state that, by a legislative act of March 17, 1868, a 
private corporation which was willing to take it off the hands 
of the state and extend it far enough to reach the Iowa and 
Kansas lines was relieved of all financial liability under the 
original charter, the state assuming the entire bonded debt with 
the interest then accumulated. 

"State Senator Woerner, a Democratic member of the 
joint committee appointed to investigate charges of collusion 
in the sales, said, in a special report, that the state would be 
making a good bargain to donate the lines to any responsible 
parties who could extend them and operate them without 
cost to the taxpayers. 

"While the lines were the property of the state they were 
not, of course, assessed for taxation. Immediately after the 
sales assessments began, and extensions, improvements and 
betterments of all sorts have increased these assessments steadily. 
This year the ten trunk lines traversing Missouri, eight of 
which are outgrowths of the lines sold by the State in the sixties, 
are assessed for $34,000,000. 

"It is impossible to see how Missouri could ever have stag- 
gered from under the debt of $31,735,840, without this source 
of taxation." 

„„„,,, . Despite the frequency, speed and com- 

ZZ^ (e). American ,. . r ,^ , • { • -1 ^ 

construction less lort oi the trains on American railroads 
thoroug , where population is dense, they do not 

surpass the European roads as roads: they are not, 
on the whole, as carefully built, or as safe to the passen- 
gers or to the people among whom they pass. That, 
too, is probably influenced by the relations between 
the roads and government. Governments are more in 



§ 3^^ ^1 Extra-Municipal Public Works. 401 

the way of looking out for the rights of the people in 
general than private corporations are, and are less apt 
to convSult economy ; moreover, if a man gets killed in 
Europe, a government loses a possible soldier, and it 
cannot spare soldiers: for all these reasons, a European 
government would be more apt than the American to 
put a bridge where a railroad crosses a driving-road, 
and to go through a town above the streets or under 
them. This has actually been vastly more the practice 
abroad than here. Our murderous grade-crossings are 
388 r/; andinci- ^^^^ost unkuowu in Europe, and where 
dentally less they occur, there is more precaution and 

careful of safety, j i r, i • ^ xi i 

delay by closmg gates than our people 
would stand. In England the construction of the 
roads, especially in the way of elevated tracks going 
through cities, and possibly at grade-crossings, is per- 
'haps not as thorough as in Germany; in other respects 
the care for the public safety compares favorably. 
Government ownership, however, is not necessary to 
secure that. Good government can secure it, whether 
it owns the roads or not; it does secure it in England; 
and government is, on the whole, improving in doing 
it here. 

388 (g). Freight The great difficulty regarding rates of 

discriminations, fg^^g ^iTid freight in America is the same, 
probably, as with privately operated roads everywhere : 
through rates between great cities served by several 
lines of roads, or by a water line as well as a railroad 
line, have naturally been lowered by competition, some- 
times below the paying point. The roads have to 
make up for it by higher rates for the intermediate non- 
competitive points. Of course they are as apt — even 
more apt, to get these local rates above reason, than to 
get the through rates below reason. Hence discontent 
that sometimes overlooks the difficulties of the roads, 
and hence grangerism and the call for government con- 
trol (154 a) or even government operation. 

The roads have been led into the golden-goose-killing 
operations of destroying the profitable part of their 
business by driving population from non-competitive 



402 The Promotion of Convenience. [§388g 

points to competing ones. Mr. Stickney * says that 
between 1870 and 1890, in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa 
and Minnesota, the former class decreased in population, 
and the latter increased. 

Besides discrimination between points, there has been 
a more arbitrary discrimination between goods, and 
through this means, as well as directly, between per- 
sons. 

And yet despite all complaints, just and unjust, the 
U. S. Bureau of Labor reports a large decrease in the 
cost of transportation while the complaints have been 
loudest. 

000 /i,, /o /• Of course all the complaints are used as 

388 (h). Consoli- ^ -1 XI 1 ^ r 

dation and arguments by the advocates 01 government 

competition. roads. As to government operation affect- 

ing competition, the argument is the same as the argu- 
ment for trusts (152): the enormous waste of competi- 
tive advertising between competing roads, and the fre- 
quent duplication of management — several able men 
doing work which, if the roads were under one man- 
agement, could be done by one able man, with clerks 
in the place of the others — the other able men being 
released to increase and cheapen other production or 
develop new conveniences (331). But all this is not 
necessarily an argument for government ownership, 
but only for consolidation; and then come in all the 
monopoly arguments against that. But those argu- 
ments hardly have the best of it, as anyone knows who 
has taken frequent journeys over routes parceled out 
among several little roads, with their conflicting con- 
nections, delays at junctions, and retail rates; and over 
the same routes after the little roads have been con- 
solidated, their connections and ticket-books unified, 
and their rates brought to the wholesale standard of 
big enterprises. But to return to the general rate 

question. General extortion is charged, but, on the 

* "The Railroad Problem", p. 62, quoted in Daniels on 

Finance. , 



§388i] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 403 

whole, unreasonably: our freight -rates, despite our 
vast uninhabited stretches, are far the lowest in the 
world; and in our thickly settled regions, our passen- 
ger-rates compare very favorably with all others; 
and moreover both rates are steadily declining. How 
much of this is due to government regulation, and 
how much to the inevitable action of competition, is 
very hard to determine. With us government regu- 
lation i'S in its infancy, and has made mistakes. It 
has not yet always succeeded in getting its rates ad- 
hered to, and, as it has greatly insisted on rates in 
proportion to distance, regardless of competition at 
certain points, it has prevented the roads holding each 
other to agreements regarding competitive places which 
might enable them to. be easier on non-competitive 
places. 

388 (i). constitu- The state's right to regulate the roads 
tionai questions, ariscs from the fact that the roads are the 
creatures of the state. Whether the state owns them 
or not, they are natural monopolies, and with us exist 
only by the use of the state's right of eminent domain: 
so the state has the right to prescribe the conditions 
of their existence (154 b). 

But suppose a road is built without any under- 
standing regarding rates, or, for that matter, with an 
understanding, it is a question whether the- state has 
then a right to impose new rates. It has been claimed 
that the conditions under which a company builds a 
road, constitute a contract with the state; and the 
Constitution of the United States (Art. II, Sec. X) 
provides that no state shall pass a law impairing the 
obligation of contracts. But under the Constitution 
(Art. I, Sec. VIII) the United States has the right 
to "regulate commerce between the several states", 
and can probably pass laws under that provision which 
would help remedy the difficulty. As to the individual 
state, it is a question whether the constitutional pro= 
vision affects a state's relation with its citizens, or the 
relations of citizens with each other: for instance, each 
man holds his land from the state, and yet the state 



404 The Promotion oj Convenience. [§ 388 i 

can take it from him by eminent domain. But emi- 
nent domain was an established institution before any 
American state was ; it is part of the original under- 
standing — the unwritten constitution, and therefore 
tacitly exempted from interference by later laws; and 
it looks as if a corporation in receiving a charter, had 
to admit certain rights as held in reserve by the state 
for the public good. Moreover, for a long time past, 
most charters have been granted subject to amend- 
ment or repeal. 

If the charter creates a virtual monopoly, of course 
the case for the state's right of amendment is all the 
stronger. But a city is not a state, and if a city makes 
a contract with a street-railway company for a rate 
of fare, that is clearly a contract, not of the state with 
its citizens, but of citizens with citizens: the state 
cannot interfere there; the Constitution of the United 
States clearly forbids. 

388 (J). Taxation Yet if the railroad is taking too much 
of franchises. money from the people, the state could 
amend most any recent charter, or both the state and the 
city could tax the franchise, unless something in the state 
constitution might forbid. There is a good deal of agita- 
tion now for state legislation making the right to tax 
all franchises perfectly clear. New York passed a law 
to do it in 1899. Nevertheless, taxing a franchise, either 
by the city or by the state, does not cover the whole 
case, especially (as we shall see more particularly later), 
as taxation for any purpose but the raising of revenue, 
is very doubtful policy. Moreover, it is conceivable 
that if fare and freight were made expensive, and then 
the money taxed away from the roads, enough might be 
got to run the whole government, and yet it would be 
solely at the expense of those using the roads, and all 
others would escape taxation. Perhaps, tho, those who 
do not use them, directly or indirectly, are so few and 
pay so little in taxes that, as in the case of bridges, the 
question concerning them may be regarded as one of the 
trifles that the law does not take into account. 



§ 388 /] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 405 

Z^Z (k). Corpora- ^^^^ ^^^^ adjustment, then, would seem 
tion graft and to be to keep cliarges at the point where 
po I ua graf . ^^^ roads can make a fair return on capital 
and pay about the same rate of taxes that other property 
does. That assum^es, however, that the railroads can 
all make money enough to do all those cheerful things ; 
but in the last decade of the nineteenth century, most 
of the American railroads were bankrupt. They had 
been built faster than business had grown to support . 
them, and very often the men spending the stock- 
holders' money incorporated themselves as ''construc- 
tion companies" and "car companies", and then paid 
those companies enormous prices to build the roads 
and equipments. 

It does not follow, however, that the roads would 
have been more prosperous if they had been govern- 
ment institutions. Probably, however, their officers 
would not have been less so, for as governments run 
things in America, the politicians in charge of such 
public works as we have, are not generally supposed 
to suffer from lack of prosperity. 

388 (I). American There havc been several efforts to regu- 
attempts at gou- late the priccs charged by the railroad 

ernment regulation, 1- rr-, i • r £ u.i 

* monopolies, ihe cluei 01 these m our 

country are the Rate Bill of 1906, not yet tested at 
this writing, and the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, 
which is thus summarized by Professor Seager : * 

**(i) Discriminations between persons, places and commodi- 
ties were prohibited, and railroad officials granting discriminating 
rates were made liable to fine and imprisonment; (2) railway 
rates for interstate traffic w^ere required to be just and reason- 
able, and any rate not just and reasonable was declared to be 
unlawful, and valid ground for a suit for damages by the 
injured party; (3) railroads were required to publish their rates 
and to change them only on public notice; (4) they were pro- 
hibited from charging a higher rate for a short haul than for 
a long haul over the same line and under similar circumstances, 
unless authorized to do so by the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission; (5) pooling contracts between railroads were prohib- 
ited. The act also created an Interstate Commerce Commis- 

*' * Op. cit. 



4o6 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 388/ 

sion to consist of five members and to be responsible for its 
enforcement and the investigation of cases of alleged violation.' 

The act has been found defective in 

"the attempt to prohibit, at one and the same time, dis- 
criminations and pooling. Experience has shown conclusively 
that competition between railroads involves discrimination. 
Competition in the railroad business means in practice making 
special rates to attract special traffic. But experience has 
shown with equal conclusiveness that agreements between 
railroads designed to put an end to competition can only be 
maintained when supplemented by pooling contracts. So 
long as the proportion of freight which each road is to secure 
depends upon its activity, the self-interest of railroad managers, 
or their credulity acted upon by the misrepresentations of 
unscrupulous shippers, will make discrimination in rates almost 
inevitable. The law undertakes to enforce two lines of policy 
which will not run together so long as different railroads act as 
carriers for the same territory." 

The amendments made and authoritatively proposed 
in the act, as well as its judicial interpretations, for 
which there is no space here, are also well summarized 
by Professor Seager. Upon the success of the Rate Bill 
and the Interstate Commerce Law, with such amend- 
ments as they may receive, probably depends the 
question of whether the railroads and public utilities* 
generally throughout the country, can well be left 
under private management with government control, 
or whether they shall be bought and operated by the 
government. 

But it will naturally be asked : if govern- 
388 (m). Unsuc- mcnt res;ulation has accomplished so little, 

cessfulness of ^ . ~ ^ , ,• -, ^ 

government regu- and if government Operation would save 
'argZTn\'f7''*' the wastcs of Competition,^ why not avoid 
gouernment ^he qucstions that regulation has not suc- 

opera ion. cccded with, and come at once to entire 

government operation? But it is by no means cer- 
tain that government's efforts, tho not accomplishing 
all they aimed at, have been useless in leading toward 
the increasing lowering of rates; and unfruitful as the 
attempt at regulation has been, the attempt at the 



§ ^S8m] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 407 

vastly harder task of operation would probably be 
equally unsatisfactory. There are two hundred thou- 
sand people in the civil service now. The corruption 
involved in dealing out these places is still, despite 
all the efforts of the civil-service reformers, among the 
chief obstructions to good government. The railroads 
employ four times as many men as the civil service; 
to make all these men government employees would 
make the corruption sixteen times as great. Their Azotes 
would simply make the tail wag the dog: instead of the 
government managing the roads, the roads would man- 
age the government. The present trimming for the 
"labor vote" is nothing compared with what would 
grow up for the consolidated railroad vote (400 h). 

Many people think that even now the railroads run 
the government — especially the state governments. 
But as long as the roads are in various hands, their in- 
terests are different, and they pull in opposite directions. 
Make a body of millions of placeholders whose interests 
are identical; if they would not have their own way in 
railroad management and everything else, to a degree 
that competition prevents anybody from having it 
now, it could be only because politicians no longer 
stand in dread of voters. The Italian experience may 
not be conclusive, but it is at least suggestive. 

The officers of the roads in such cases, in America, 
would be "favorite sons" and "men with pulls". The 
genius for railroad management that now fills most of 
the presidencies and superiritendencies with men who 
began at the brakes, would have to give way to the 
genius for political pulls; the roads, the shippers and 
the passengers would suffer accordingly; and the tax- 
paver would have to meet the deficits. 

The effect on railroad salaries probably would be 
what it has been on telegraph salaries in England. As 
soon as government control took the pressure of com^- 
petition off, salaries advanced, deficits began, and the 
taxpayers had to settle them. 

Rates would be governed by political favoritism in- 
stead of the exigencies of business. 



4o8 The Promotion of Convenience. [§388m 

The experience of our Canadian neighbors is valuable 
in this connection. The London Economist states that 
the lines the government has built in Canada are located 
to foster constituencies, not trade; there was much 
corruption in the contracts ; the roads have been run as 
political machines ; much improving has been done for 
the sake of giving contracts to political allies; cost of 
operating has been higher, and number of employees 
greater, than on private lines; on account of political 
pulls, unfit employees are retained, and favorable rates 
are given to friends of the administration; politicians 
back enormous claims against the railways; and un- 
businesslike competition to help political favorites has 
injured private roads. 

-oo, , ,,, , „ The effect of government operation on 

388rn;. "Labor" , ., . . , °' , . . . ■ . 

under government strikcS IS OUC OI the mOSt important pOlUtS 

operation. ■^_^ ^^^ wholc discussiou. Of coursc a rail- 

road is not like a factory, where Labor and Ability can 
have their quarrels without making the public suffer: 
if the factory stops, the public can get unmonopolized 
goods at some other factory, or for a time from the 
stock in the shops. But if there is a strike on a railroad, 
the public must simply do without the service until 
matters are adjusted, and at great loss of money and 
convenience. This certainly gives the public, as rep- 
resented by the state, a right to prevent quarrels be- 
tween Labor and Ability from stopping the cars (32). 
Government operation would certainly simplify this 
matter. We do not hear of many strikes in the post- 
offices : but they are much simpler affairs, and require, 
in large part, a higher type of Labor. But if each rail- 
road employee were a government servant, resistance 
to regulations, or refusal to work, would be fiat rebellion, 
and then there would not be as much question of sup- 
pressing it by force as there is about suppressing strike- 
riots now. 

It is impossible to tell what the majority of the 
advocates of government operation of the roads really 
want : at one moment they seem to be calling for gov- 



§ 3^^ P] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 409 

ernment control, not only in railroads but in all industry; 
and as soon as government sends police or militia, or 
even injunction, to enforce control, they are crying out 
against the tyranny of it. 

There is much difference of opinion regarding state 
operation of the railways in New South Wales, but 
there is no difference in the opinion that the great 
strike of^ 1903 was better handled by the government 
than it could have been handled by a private company. 
But there happened to be a strong government, which 
probably would have backed up a private company 
with all needed efficiency. A weak government would 
have had a weak result in either case. 
Z%^(o). Improve- There seems to be no just reason, 
under pHuaie^ howcvcr, w.hy private managers of rail- 
controi. roads should not contract with their men 

for definite periods of service or definite notice before 
quitting, and especially not to interfere with other 
men taking their places. But the unions probably 
would not let the men make such contracts, and if 
the men were to make them, they have no estates at 
peril for damages, in case they break them. There is 
a great deal of honor among the men — enough to sus- 
tain many of them in any sacrifice to their unions; 
but that very feature of their honor tends to prevent 
it sustaining contracts with the companies. Yet that 
is not true of all classes of employees. The locomotive 
engineers naturally must be men of more ability than 
most other unionists, and they quite generally stand 
by their agreements. 

There has been a great deal of talk of government's 
protecting the public by declaring conditions upon 
000 , ^ n which Labor must accept employment 

388 (P). Govern- -ui-x i- • . K-, 

ment control of undcr pubuc iranchises, just on the same 
private operations. ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ i^ declares Conditions upon 

which Ability must operate the franchises. The propo- 
sition certainly seems fair. Its details are simply to 
make it the law that anybody accepting such service 
shall give some stipulated notice before quitting work, 
shall not* interfere with anybody taking his place, and 



41 o The Promotion of Convenience. [§388;/? 

shall be subjected to imprisonment (fines are of no use 
against people who have no money) for violation or 
evasion of the law. There are now of course general 
laws against violence and destruction of property, and 
occasional timid laws against interfering with the Right 
to Work, but probably there is no law against a laborer 
who is really a public servant, quitting his place with- 
out notice. Such laws, however, would not be counter 
to the XV. Amendment of the National Constitution 
prohibiting involuntary servitude, because the men 
would enter upon the obligations voluntarily. But 
undoubtedly the labor agitators — especially those who 
make their living out of strikes — ^would in the first place 
bitterly oppose such laws ; and if the laws were carried, 
would try to dissuade men from taking service -under 
them. But such laws are so manifestly fair and in a 
good direction, that it is certainly worth while to 
attempt them.* 

* As a safeguard in such matters, Professor Adams recom- 
mends that franchises granted to public-service corporations 
and industries with a "public use" shall contain the following 
points : 

"Conditions of employment to be fixed for annual periods, 
some time in advance, by collective bargaining between repre- 
sentatives of the employers and employees, as provided in the 
Victorian Wage Boards (described on his page 496). Where 
either side refuses to elect representatives, or the representatives 
refuse to elect a standing arbiter or arbiters, such officials 
to be appointed by the governor or by the courts. 

' ' Employment in such industries or service to be by individual 
enlistment or contract for a protracted period, say three months. 
Employers and employees to post bonds for the faithful per- 
formance of all agreements. The bond of the employees to 
be accumulated by retaining a percentag-e of their wages, as 
is done in the trade agreement between Wichert and Gardiner, 
of Brooklyn, and the Independent Union of Shoe-workers of 
Greater New York and Vicinity. 

"Strikes, picketing and boycotts among such employees to 
be punished as criminal conspiracies, and special protection 
to be afforded the employer in case of strikes, by police, militia 
and injunctions. 

"Lockouts to be declared illegal, with provisions for the 
appointment of a receiver for the industry when its operation 
is discontinued." 



§ 389] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 411 

Whatever may be the way out, it is as certain as 
anything in the future of society can be, that the 
pubhc will not long endure such inconveniences as it 
has lately been put to by railroad strikes; not to 
speak of the coal strike and the beef strike; and that, 
government operation or not, the law will inevitably 
take a more comprehensive hold on the matter, and that 
any man having any employment at all, will have to 
recognize some duties that he now ignores. (Compare 
the treatment of the subject in Chapter XX.) 

IfJVidsZT' I^ ^^^ United States, cities, states and 
politics. even the nation have given "goverment 

aid" for building railroads, the smaller governments 
generally by money, and the states and the general 
government by land granted to the company out of 
the public domain, which the company could sell or 
mortgage. In Europe, "state aid" consists more fre- 
quently in the state building and running the railroads. 
England can hardly be said to give any aid at all: for 
the landholding interests in Parliament are so powerful 
that England does not give the roads the full benefit of 
eminent domain ; but they have virtually had to buy 
their rights of way for whatever landowners hold out for. 
Nevertheless, they compare favorably in financial results 
and facilities to the public, with roads owned by gov- 
ernment elsewhere. 

It seems plain from our long consideration, that 
which is the better plan depends on the degree of civili- 
388 (r). The con- zatiou. As far as the world has got, the best 
elusion. present mea,ns, as between government and 

private initiative, of developing railroads, seems to be to 
leave the building and running of them to individual 
initiative, as it is here and in England, with cautious 
government aid Avhen really desirable, and to improve 
the government regulation of them. 

In point of time, the conveniences gov- 

Inhxpress!^^^ ernments probably began supplying next 

after money and roads, were post-horses. 



412 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 38S 

They were supplied on the roads as early as Assyria. 
The postal system, like roads, was evolved for military 
reasons: the supplies of post-horses along the roads 
was begun for the transmission of military orders. 
389 (a). City At first sight, there appears to be a good 

versus county. ^^r^i of robbing Peter to pay Paul in the 
modern postal service — making the cities pay for the 
remote regions. But there is really not as much as ap- 
pears at first sight : for tho three quarters of the expense 
of the postal service of our whole country is in trans- 
mission; in thickly settled regions, probably more than 
two thirds is in collecting and distributing, and less than 
one third in transporting. Even if the thickly settled 
regions entailed more expense in transporting too, the 
Peter-and-Paul system would still be amply justified. 
We can all well afford to be taxed for such an agency of 
civilization as the mails. But in some respects it has 
gone beyond bounds. 
_„_,,, c ... Bv a perversion of the American demand 

Z%<^(b). Favoritism J ^ , r- , n- ,-, 

to papers and for the diiiusion of intelligence, the govern- 
penodicais ment is now losing some $12,000,000 an- 

nually in carrying advertisements attached to magazines. 
This it does at a cost of five cents a pound where it 
receives but one cent. Most of this money goes to sub- 
sidizing a business outside of the legitimate periodicals 
that has grown up in consequence of the subsidy, and 
which consists of mere pretexts of periodicals, contain- 
ing no literature or information of any value — ^what 
there is is mainly the product of scissors and paste-pot 
— the whole sandwiched between its own weight, and 
sometimes more than three times its own weight, of 
advertising pages, these latter largely devoted to worse 
than useless things, and often to abominations. 

The circulation of the class of periodicals read by 
those who will peruse these pages, amounts to less than 
one tenth of one per cent, of the circulation of those 
which the government spends this money in carrying; 
and the circulation of the periodicals of an humbler but 
still respectable and useful character, constitutes not one 
tenth of one per cent. more. The rest pander only to 



§389^] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 413 

low tastes, while the government subsidy upholds them 
in competition with the periodicals that offer respectable 
matter, and limit themselves to respectable advertise- 
ments. Virtually all of the worthless and worse than 
worthless class has grown up under the government sub- 
sidy, to the indirect loss of the better class, and at the 
direct expense of the whole community. 

Every dollar paid for postage-stamps contains a 
contribution of eighty cents toward these subsidies. If 
it were not for this waste in subsidizing the lowest 
class of periodicals, our Post-Office could sell letter- 
stamps for half a cent, and postal-cards for a quarter of 
a cent, and realize a surplus in place of the present 
regular deficit. 

Such subsidies can be realized only by large circula- 
tion, and the most effective means of obtaining large 
circulation, of course is low price. So far, the two 
offset each other, but the large circulation attracts 
heavy advertising, and through it the benefit of the 
subsidy is indirectly realized. The five- and ten-cent 
magazines actually cost for paper and printing more 
than the subscribers pay. The deficit and an enormous 
profit are paid by the advertisers, and the advertising 
pays this enormous profit because the government 
carries it at a fifth of what it costs to do the service. 

Where the Post-Office charges $100 to carry 100,000 
two-page circulars, it will carry 100,000 copies of them 
paged in a magazine for $2. The publisher will get, at 
usual rates, $166, out of which he must pay the deficit on 
his sales to subscribers. Leaving this out of account, 
his gross profit on each leaf (two pages) of advertising, 
per 100,000 copies (for printing and paper cannot be 
over $12) is $154. Loss to the government $10. 

Postmaster-General Smith said in 1901 : "In the case 
of hundreds of such publications, whenever the publisher 
expends $1000 in his venture, the government spends 
not less than $2000 in carrying on that publisher's 
business." One publisher sends annually nearly 5,000,- 
000 pounds through the mails, at a net loss to the 
government of close to a third of a million dollars. 



414 The Proinotion of Convenience. [§ 389 r 

„„„ , , The United States is the only great nation 

389 re;, compared ^, , •- -n ^ r^^ Z ^ t 

with other that Tuns its Post-Uiiice at a loss, in 

countries. most Other civilized countries, the rates 

on periodicals are the same as on books. Great Britain 
publishes about 4900 periodicals; 40,000 new ones 
were admitted to our mails in the years 1903-5. These 
periodicals of ours kill books. In 1902, Germany pub- 
lished 354 separate books to the million inhabitants; 
France, 344, Russia, 85; the United States, 81. Spain 
alone of the alleged civilized countries, published less 
than we did — 66. 

Meanwhile these little spurts and spasms 
3S9(ci). Damage ^f literature sold at less than it costs, are 

TO lliPyCt'LlAi'Q 

unfitting the American people for any 
reading which demands and repays sustained attention. 
The people are giving up the book-reading habit, and 
taking to magazines instead. Since the population of 
the country has been doubling, the bookstores have 
decreased to one-third.* 

389 (eh Govern- "^^^^ Carrying mails is a government 
ment versus pri- function, is established beyond reasonable 
uate enterprise. discussiou. But in Considering what other 
matters are to become government functions, it is 
worth while to bear in mind three considerations 
regarding its running of the Post-Office. First: this 
heavy waste of money and of the possible popular ca- 
pacity for improving reading, would be impossible if the 
mails had been carried by private industry for profit. 
Second : mails (for distributing circulars) are carried in all 
considerable cities by private industry in successful 
competition, regarding both prices and efficiency, with 
the national Post-Office. Third: if the mails were 
carried by private corporations, there would be redress 
for failures. This paragraph is written in the country, 
where regular communication with New York is im- 
portant. For four days out of the last five, mails that 

* For most of the facts in this exposition of our postal policy, 
I am indebted to articles by Col. C. W. Burrows in respectively 
Construction (Pittsburg) for June 10, 1905, and the Yale 
Review for February, 1906. 



§ 39o] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 415 

were due in the morning have not arrived until evening, 
and there is no redress. 

In 1906 the United States government, after printing 
postage-stamps for fourteen years, returned to the 
habit of getting them from private companies, because 
they could make them cheaper. 

In Europe, the post-offices are not confined as nearly 
as ours, to handling written and printed matter: they 
generally do everything that is done by our express 
companies. But that state service is not as good, on 
the whole, as the service of our express companies. 
It is slow and unaccommodating, and apparently the 
rush of American express business would swamp it 
utterly. Moreover, on the Continent, they do not do 
even their work with letters and papers as well as ours 
is done. 

389 (f). Best ^^^ people write vastly more letters 

where people than any other people, and so they watch 
watch It most. ^-^^ post-office closQr (387, 392 c), and de- 
mand higher efficiency.* 

390. Telegraph. '^^^ European and Australasian govern- 

ments do the telegraphing entirely. Their 
services compare very favorably with ours in apparent 
cheapness, but not in actual cheapness. The difference 
is paid, like our postal deficit, out of the government 
budget — ultimately the taxes, of course. 

Despite the importance of our government's mail 
service, it probably would better not go into telegraph- 
ing. One reason is that the people generally would 
not watch telegrams as they do letters : fewer people 
send telegrams. A better reason is that the private com- 
panies on the whole prbbably do it cheaper. As already 
said, the English government, and probably the others, do 
it as we do our post-office, at a deficit; and the demand 
for telegraphic service is not, like that for mail service, 
of such infinite importance to the education of even 
those who do not use it much, that it would be wise 
to do it at the expense of the taxpayers. 

* Regarding the Post-Offi.ce, see also p. 418. 



41 6 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 390 

Some of the important tendencies of government 
control of industries were so well and so entertainingly 
summed up in a Washington letter to the New York 
Evening Post during the great coal strike, and carry 
so much instruction regarding the conditions of govern- 
ment work inevitable in the present stage of political 
capacity, that it is well worth while to give space to 
some extracts. A word has been changed here and 
there for the sake of the connection. 

" Suppose the government were in the coal-mining business, 
how would the employees be selected? 

" They would be appointed on the patronage, or influence, 
basis, by quotas according to States and Congressional districts. 
Then, after the followers of those in political control had been 
given positions, the coal-mines would be put into 'the classified 
service', to insure a life position practically for the favorites 
thus selected. 

" How would their services terminate? 

" By death. Age or incapacity would not serve as a disquali- 
fication; sympathy for the needs of an employee would prevent 
his severance from the pay-roll, and any civil pension or retire- 
ment fund would be dismissed as un-American. 

" What would be the rate of compensation? 

" In the higher grades of work, too low to obtain the right kind 
of men. And yet it would not be safe to make the compensation 
adequately high, as this would mean a correspondingly enhanced 
prize for the political heelers. In the lower rounds of the 
ladder, however, the compensation would always be consider- 
ably more than in private employment. 

" How would the work of mining be supervised? 

" There would be permanent and efficient employees, bearing 
the title of 'deputy somebody' or 'administrative assistant 
this', who would get moderate salaries, and upon whom the 
real responsibility would rest. Above them would be a class of 
supervisors, politicians, at about twice the salary, changing 
with the administration of the Federal Government, and 
knowing little or nothing about the business. 

" What would be the relation of the government mines to 
machinery, and progress in mechanical appliances? 

" One of non-intercourse. 

' ' Who would look after the details upon which economical 
administration rests? 

" Nobody. It would be unfair to assign any man with a 
political future to so unpopular a position. Hardly any 
economy of administration in a mill or a mine can be suggested 
which does not hurt somebody's feelings or intrench upon 
personal profit or interest. 



§39°] Extra-Municipal Public Works. 417 

"What would be the relation of the mine employees to 
politics ? 

"They would organize into a union, and employ lobbyists 
to intimidate Congress into raising their salaries, extend their 
vacations, and procure for them various privileges. 

" How would the mine get its supplies? 

" On contract competitive bids where honest men were in 
charge of the administration. Otherwise the specifications 
would go out so worded as to throw business into the hands 
of friends who happened to possess certain articles, or to hold 
an agency or monopoly on them. Then the price would be 
made whatever the traffic could bear. 

" How much would it cost to mine coal under these circum- 
stances ? 

"From two to three times what it costs now. 

" Would the American consumers, then, be charged $20 a 
ton for coal? 

"By no means; they would be charged $6 a ton, and the 
rest of the cost would be made up through genera] taxation, 
the m.ethods of bookkeeping employed being such as to disguise 
the operation. 

" How would the public view such a management of the coal- 
mines ? 

" With supreme satisfaction. The labor unions would like 
it, because they would have complete control there as against 
disputed control in outside employments. They would cite 
the anthracite mines as a great example, upon the basis of 
which they would ask to have the wood-chopping industry of 
the country absorbed by the Federal Government. Politicians 
would like it because it would give places and positions which 
they could control. The Sunday-school weeklies would teem 
with illustrations of the heroisms of Uncle Sam's servants in 
the coal-mines. Congressional oratory would exhaust itself in 
eulogies of the ability of the government, and of the orator's 
own party, to meet great questions, to do things, to accomplish 
something, and to leave carping and criticism to outsiders and 
Mugwumps. Those who had failed in private business would 
especially derive satisfaction from the thought that, in an 
enterprise in which they were stockholders, the Morgans and 
the Wanamakers were being distanced. The patriotic people of 
every class and condition would rejoice in the reflection that 
whatever the United States did was done right. The stray, 
solitary man who challenged this view would be almost ostracised. 
It is better to be a patriot than a pessimist. 

" Would the operation of these mines lead to application of 
the same principle to the management of beef -raising, or of 
selling groceries? 

" Undoubtedly. The United States, with its unbounded 
resources, is rich enough to carry the load of wasteful pro- 
duction in a considerable number of industries. 



4i8 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 390 



"^GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT IN OTHER LINES. 

" Not an answer has been given which is not sustained by an 
abundance of experience in the present deaUngs of the United 
States Government. We have a printing-office here of 4000 
employees, whose lack of modern machinery and other appliances 
of economical production is such that the printer's art would 
look backward with a vengeance were all the publishing busi- 
ness of the country put on a similarly socialistic basis. The 
control of the labor unions there is absolute. Uniformity of 
work and wages is practically complete. Its employees, selected 
on the spoils basis, have been given permanency by 'civil- 
service reform'. Not a bureau of the Federal Government, 
within present recollection, has been established on any other 
basis. The census clerks were thus employed, and civil- 
service reform only comes in at a late date to act as an em- 
balming agent. The rural free-delivery service has afforded to 
the spoils system a grand debauch, and yet the present Presi- 
dent is a good friend of the merit system. Civil-service reform 
was never healthier than now, and still its practical conquests 
have been small. 

" The Post-Office Department shows some wonderful results 
in the way of celerity, security, and certainty wherever it has 
clung to the coat-tails of private enterprise, as in the fast mail 
trains of our competing railroads, and in its belated employ- 
ment of pneumatic tubes. Wherever it has done things itself 
it has done them badly. It was chased for years by the invent- 
ors of canceling-machines, until finally, surrounded and over- 
come, it most reluctantly surrendered. The private manager 
would have chased the canceling -machine, just as Commodore 
Vanderbilt offered a prize to anybody who would invent the 
brake he needed. 

" No student of postal affairs can take seriously the deficit 
of record. The actual one, with the free rent of millions upon 
millions of dollars' worth of property, owned and cared for and re- 
paired out of the general funds of the government, would be 
worth while. A score of items enter into the calculation which 
prevent the postal deficit from being regarded as more than a 
pleasant fiction of the Department. The letter-carriers are to-day 
welded into a union, and have sent one of their number, accord- 
ing to current report, to California to try to defeat Congress- 
man Loud for reelection, because he had opposed an increase 
in their salaries. The organization does not suggest that there 
is any lack of competent men at the present rates, but merely 
deems its proper salary that which through political manipula- 
tion it is able to get. And still the post-office is the great 
American idol. 

' ' The government receives ninety-three cents a pound for 
carrying your letters and postal cards. A private concern 



§39o] Extra-Municipal Ptihlic Works. 419 

could afford to pay millions a year for the monopoly privilege 
of carrying letters at half the present rates. The Department is 
'squealing ' all the time because it has to carry the newspapers 
so cheap — a cent a pound — and yet the express companies, 
those boasted monsters of monopoly and watered stock, are 
competing in certain ranges of territory for that very business. 
It is too bad that Australasia is so far away that its pitiable 
and dreary experiments in state socialism may not be more 
readily available for our guidance." 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

PUBLIC WORKS (continued). 

Municipal.^ 

391. Street Rail- I^ street-car accommodations, America 

ways. leads the great nations immeasurably. 

And yet America did not have the first electric cars. 
Germany had the first, but America has 
introduced them much the fastest of all 
the countries. Germans wait for their paternal govern- 
ment to take care of them, and governments move 
slowly; Americans see chances to make money, and 
take care of themselves promptly. Germany's having 
the first electric cars did not result from her being 
the European leader in street railways. Great Britain 
was the leader, especially in Scotland. In municipal 
39Ub). Municipal Operation, too, she was the leader, but 
operation increas- in a qualified way, like that of the French 
Tittle on"continent, railroads (388 o) . In 1899, in Scotland, 
in America none, two -thirds of the Street railways were 
owned by the cities, and leased to the companies oper- 

* In this chapter my obligations to Dr. Albert Shaw's two 
volumes on "Municipal Government" are so many that to 
acknowledge each one would require including his name in 
nearly every page. I am also indebted for much recent informa- 
tion regarding the United States, to Professor Zueblin's " Ameri- 
can Municipal Progress", and to the Proceedings of the Na- 
tional Municipal League, especially the volume for 1906. This 
organization well deserves the support of ever57- good citizen, 
and its future volumes may be expected to be mines of valuable 
experience and suggestion. Their usefulness has been increas- 
ing at a geometrical rate. 

420 



§ 391 ^] Municipal Public Works. 421 

ating them; and in England and Ireland, one-third. 
As said before, it is very important to keep in mind 
the difference between municipal ownership and 
municipal operation. The first is almost universally 
approved; the second very widely questioned. 

At first Parliament forbade the cities to operate 
their roads. In 1882 one city — Huddersfield, was per- 
mitted to operate its railways. Since then, up to 1899, 
about twenty cities have obtained the right, and as 
the companies' leases are now rapidly falling in, many 
more are applying for it. Towns owning electric 
plants were particularly anxious to use them on their 
railroads, before, in 1899, there began a violent opposition 
to ''municipal trading" as they call it (400 h, 414 a). 

Sometime since, London began operating the trams 
in the Southern section. The results have been dis- 
astrous. The net income for the year ending March 31, 
1906, was but a tenth of that from the Northern sec- 
tion, operated by a private company: there appears to 
be abundant evidence of graft — a thing until lately 
almost unknown in London. 

Virtually all the European cities get large revenues 
from the street railways, even when they do not run 
them themselves. The Hamburg railways pay more 
to the city than to their stockholders. 

There is little, if any, municipalization on the Conti- 
nent. But minute regulation for frequency of cars, 
plenty of seating-room, etc., is almost universal. There, 
however, political regulation is easier, and more people 
live in the cities where they work, and even in the same 
buildings, than in Great Britain or America. Therefore 
there is not as great need of street railways or as great 
crowding of them. But if our people were to get more in 
the way of living near their businesses, probably it 
would not relieve the frightful overcrowding and dis- 
comfort of the street railways: for the companies 
would simply run fewer cars; they would not run any 
more cars than they could run at a big profit, until 
they were compelled to. 

This of course is an argument for the cities taking 



42 2 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 391 h 

the roads by eminent domain, and operating them, 
but that ought not to be necessary. The cities could 
compel decent accommodations from the companies, 
if the art of politics and the quality of the suffrage 
were up to it: it is done in many places in Europe (426- 
426 b). Already some charters here have made one hope- 
ful condition for safety — that the employees shall have 
enough time for sleep. Our companies have inspectors 
oow.il/ ^ ^ constantly walking along their lines or 

391 (c). Need of i ^ i • ^ • T^i • 

constant govern- ridmg short distauccs m their cars, to see 
ment inspection. ^^^^ ^j^-^^^ ^^^ conductcd in the interest 

of the owners. Why should not the people have similar 
inspectors to see that things are conducted in the interest 
of the people — that cars are run with reasonable safety, 
cleanliness, politeness and frequency — not as at present, 
from the Madison Avenue line in New York down through 
most lines in the United States, just infrequently 
enough, even in slack hours, to keep the cars over- 
crowded? Mayor Cutler of Rochester asks the authority 
to appoint a Commissioner of Public Utilities who shall 
supervise them all, and receive all complaints, with 
power to call for papers and accounts, investigate under 
oath, and redress all grievances. 

Some answers to the question in the preceding para- 
graph are, not far to seek: one is the slowness of legis- 
latures and city councils in providing the statutes and 
ordinances obviously required for the public conven- 
ience — a slowness aided by corruption from the com- 
panies. Another reason is the probability that even if 
the laws and the inspectors to help enforce them were 
provided, the inspectors would be bought off. When 
the government is unable to provide even this moderate 
regulation of the roads, what of its capacity to manage 
them entirely? 

391 (d). Municipal In America, until very lately, most of 
fdmncing fn^'^^^ the citics simply gave away the franchises. 
America, Chicago's street railway franchises are 

easily worth $75,000,000, and the city never had any- 
thing from them. Even during the early years of 
this century, Mayor Arkbridge of Philadelphia ignored 



§ 391 e] Municipal Public Works. 423 

a responsible offer of $2,500,000 for privileges which 
were subsequently given to existing companies. Yet 
the companies had before turned all the streets their 
tracks went through, from cobblestones to asphalt. 
Baltimore in i860 sold her franchises for a fifth of 
the fares. Later it Was reduced to nine per cent. 
The proceeds take care of all the parks, and have 
already bought several new ones. Cincinnati, Provi- 
dence and Richmond receive five per cent, of the fares. 
Some other cities get revenue from the roads in vari- 
ous ways, and the tendency to do so is becoming 
general. 

391 (e). Ownership The United States has as yet no munici- 
in America. pal Operation. Up to 1907 the only notice- 

able cases even of municipal ownership, were Boston's 
ownership of her subway, and New York's ownership 
of the Brooklyn Bridge railway, both of which the 
cities leased to the operating companies. But New 
York has loaned her credit to a private company 
to build the subway, which, after a long lease, is to be 
accepted in payment of the loan. It is claimed that 
the Boston subway is paying interest on its bonds, and 
has a surplus for a sinking fund that will pay off the prin- 
cipal before the debt matures, leaving the city the valu- 
able source of revenue free of all liability. Early in '99, 
Detroit w^as preparing to buy all her street railways. 
But the courts had already waked up some opposing 
amendments of the state constitution that were passed 
when the state had heavy losses in the infancy of steam- 
railway building. Unless the constitution is again 
amended, these render government ownership impos- 
sible. Yet the city has lately taken possession of the 
tracks of a new company, with threats to destroy them; 
and the matter is before the courts. In Cleveland in 
1899 the problem was enlarged by a great and destruc- 
tive strike, with dynamite and boycott of people riding 
in the cars. 

Since 1897 Cleveland has been making a fight for 
a three-cent fare. The old combine running the 
street railroads, and running them well, has fought 



424 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 391 ^ 

the matter up to the United States Supreme Court. 
Mayor "Tom" Johnson has at last developed an inde- 
pendent company running on one street at a three-cent 
fare, and himself acted as motorman on the first car. 
He fought for this line through twenty-five injunctions, 
and the twenty-sixth that is now impending in the 
Supreme Court. If he gets the decision, he will spread 
the new line into regions now monopolized by the old 
company. He forced the old company for a time to 
sell seven tickets for a quarter, and to give a very high 
class of accommodation, but the five-cent fare has 
just been restored. 

San Francisco lately took a line whose franchise had 
expired, but the voters refused to operate it. 

The voters of Seattle in 1906 refused to authorize 
bonds for building municipal car-lines. 

There are two main reasons alleged in favor of 
municipal operation. 

391 (f). Argument First, it is generally reaHzed that mon- 
for municipal opolics wiU be run for the benefit of the 
opera ion, owucrs, and it is claimed that the only way 

to have them run for the benefit of the public, is for the 
public to do the running The weak point in that reason- 
ing is that here in America, with our large ignorant and 
venal vote, the public is generally run by the politicians, 
so that if the monopolies are nominally run for the 
benefit of the public, they will really be run for the 
benefit of the politicians. 

39ir?;. American ^^ ^9^S^ Mayor Dunne of Chicago, who 
and European had been clcctcd to municipalize the street 
railways, got an expert, Mr. Dalrymple, 
over from Glasgow, to get the benefit of his experience. 
His opinion regarding municipal operation in America 
underwent some changes during his stay among us. 
When he arrived, he said: 

' ' I see no reason why Chicago, or any other city in this country, 
should not be able to own its street railways and to run them 
with as much success as we have achieved at Glasgow. I ad- 
mit that the proposition at Chicago is a much larger one than 
the one we had to tackle, but at the bottom it is the same. . . . 



§ 391 ^^] Municipal Public Works. 425 

"The people of Glasgow would not go back to the old days 
of private ownership for anything in the world. I am not 
saying that a company could not do as well by the public. I 
know, in fact, that it could, but it would be doing so with a 
somewhat different end in view. For a company has always the 
shareholders to consider. And I have to admit that you will 
find people in Glasgow to-day — quite influential people, too — 
who say that the street-car service is not profitable." 

After he had become acquainted with our democratic 
ways, he said: 

"To put street railroads, gasworks, telephone companies, 
etc., under municipal ownership would be to create a political 
machine in every large city that would be simply impregnable. 
These political machines are already strong enough with their 
control of policemen, firemen, and other office-holders. 

"If, in addition to this, they could control the thousands of 
men employed in the great public-utility corporations, the 
political machines would have a power that could not be over- 
thrown. I came to this country a believer in public ownership 
[operation?]. What I have seen here, and I have studied the 
situation carefully, makes me realize that private ownership 
[operation?] under proper conditions is far better for the citizens 
of American cities." 

Chicago is, in 1907, in the very safe position of having 
from the legislature power to own street railways, but 
none to operate them. 

Nevertheless, it is to be considered 

( ). asgow. ^j^^^ ^^ ^^^ report of the Glasgow 

tramways for the year ending ]\lay i, 1905, prepared 
by this same IVTr. Dalrymple, it is stated that 
"the total revenue was ^764,790 and the working 
expenses ;^387,i67, which leaves a profit of ;^377,62 3 or 
13.6 per cent, on the capital expenditure of ;^ 2, 7 63 ,381." 
These facts are quoted by a writer to the New York 
J"^"m^5 in January, 1906. He adds: 

"Deduct both interest on capital, ;^59,9o6, and sinking fund, 
£^6, gig. Also deduct the local taxes, which have been in- 
creased from ;;^2,485 to ;^38,3i6 per annum since the city 
took over the lines, and the 2*5,434 exacted by the Imperial 
Government as income-tax on the profits, besides the ;^2 5,ooo 
paid to the city chest as a rental for the streets, and 1-emember- 
ing that out of revenue the lines were kept in a perfect state 



426 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 391 /^ 

of repair, there was left a surplus absolutely net of ;^202,o38, 
7 per cent, on the capital. 

" The Tramways Committee is so ultra-conservative and so 
anxious that its rich profits shall not be raided too fast for 
'the parks and popular free music' that it puts a part of this 
surplus down in the books as 'permanent -way renewals fund 
and depreciation', tho it has provided beforehand both for 
upkeep and sinking fund. 

' ' The truth is that the municipal street railways are so fabu- 
lously rich that the managers are afraid in some cases to let the 
people know all at once what gold-mines they have got, lest 
they should lose their balance and abolish fares altogether. 
Mr. Bellamy, the able General Manager of the Liverpool system, 
told me in September that on their lines they pay off yearly 
10 per cent, of the real capital cost, tho the city has increased 
the average length of the 2 -cent stage 240 per cent, since it 
acquired the lines, and has reduced the average fare 40 per 
cent., a gain'to the traveling public of $1,500,000 a year. 'The 
fact is, Martin', he said, 'the financial position is so rosy that 
we dare not expose it fully. We are accumulating a surplus 
which will make us impregnable to all the assaults of fortune, 
and then we shall bring down fares with a rush.' " 

Q^^^^ There is much evidence on the other 

Britain versus sidc, as will be scen later. But the con- 
America. ^^^^ ^£ ^^{^q^^^^ (Jqcs not Seem to forbid 

the belief that municipal tramways have succeeded 
in Great Britain. But if there were no conflict at 
all, it would still be far from proved that similar 
success would attend their operation in the United 
States at our present stage of political evolution. Great 
Britain, unlike us, has a restricted municipal suffrage, no 
confusion of national with municipal politics, almost 
entire freedom from municipal graft — at least until 
something like it has begun to appear in connection with 
municipal trading; and a set of social conditions under 
which cooperative trading has grown to great success, 
and even cooperative production has reached some re- 
spectable success — neither of which evidences of coopera- 
tive capacity have our people ever succeeded in demon- 
strating. Farther evidence on the British conditions 
will be given later. 

Mr. Dalrymple's expert opinion, however, loses sight 
of the distinction between ownership and operation, 
and does not necessarily preclude municipal ownership. 



§ 391^] Municipal Public Works. 427 

The fact seems to be that -if politics were sufficiently 
advanced to own and operate the roads, it would be 
sufficiently advanced to regulate them without owning 
and operating. In Washington, where Congress can do 
anything with the roads that it pleases, and where local 
graft is too small to control Congress, they are run very 
well. 

The efforts of Mayor Head of Nash- 
391 . as VI s. ^'^]Yq^ show what good government with- 
out operation, or even ownership, can accomplish. 
About the opening of the century the street-railway 
company claimed a perpetual franchise. After a 
bitter and expensive fight in the courts, he got them 
to agree to sell out at any time after twenty years 
should have elapsed, at a prescribed method of 
valuation, after a year's notice; to pay the city ten 
thoitsand dollars for failing to keep the streets through 
which they passed in condition during the litigation; 
to give the city a park costing $125,000; to pay the 
city two per cent, of their gross income till it should 
reach a million dollars a year, and three per cent there- 
after; to spend a million and a half dollars in rehabili- 
tating their plant, which had been permitted to run 
down during the preceding three years; to give uni- 
versal transfers ; to run all cars under a central shed 
where transfers could be facilitated; and to keep the 
street between their tracks and for two feet outside, 
in as good condition as the city keeps the rest of the 
streets. The company spent a million more than was 
stipulated, has enabled the city to keep up its parks 
and buy more (it had none before the agreement) ; has 
given good service; and its securities have more than 
doubled in value. 

In Rochester the Board of Health has 
391 ( )■ oc ester, f^^^^^^ -j-j^g railways to provide good cars, 

and has prevented freight -cars from running during 
the crow^ded hours between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. In that 
city there were a great many franchises unused, but 
held onto in order to keep competition out, as are 
many municipal franchises of all sorts in England. 



428 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 391 / 

One strong reason for municipalization is a very sound 
argument for ownership, but hardly touches on opera- 
Z^] (I). The "in- "tio^- It IS that, as the cities grow, the 
crement" in busiucss of the roads increases, and more- 

'ses. over it increases without a proportionate 

increase in the expense — no greater managerial ability is 
needed, and cars are less and less apt to run partly 
filled; in this way, there rolls up a sort of double 
"unearned increment" (74) of which the public should 
have the benefit. 

It may be asked : why is the public any better entitled 
to this unearned increment than to that on land? For 
the very reason that each landowner is entitled to the 
increment on his own land. There is no question about 
the public being the owner (unless it has given it away, 
or sold it, as to the purpose) of the land on which the 
street railway runs — of the instrument which produces 
the increment; and as, when that instrument is a 
natural monopoly, the enthusiasm and competition of 
individual ownership cannot be applied to it anyhow, 
there is no need for the public ever to part with it. 
On the other hand, without the enthusiasm and com- 
petition of individual ownership in ordinary land, we 
would never have got beyond the barbaric conditions 
universal among peoples where private ownership of 
land does not exist (75). 

As securing the unearned increment of 
leased but mt ^ the franchises to the public, much is to be 
Immanaglmefit ^^^^ ^^ favor of the rcccut EugHsh method, 
and that of the New York subway, under 
which the city retains the ownership of the roads, or at 
least of the franchises (it may not be necessary for the 
city to build the roads), and leases them to companies. 
That seems to be better suited to our degree of political 
development, even tho England may be ready for the 
farther step of the cities operating the roads themselves. 
Retaining a share of the receipts, as Baltimore, Cincin- 
nati, Providence, Nashville, Richmond and an increas- 
ing number of other cities do, is only one form of lease. 
There is a reason for the public sharing in profits 



§391^^] Municipal Public Works. 429 

rather than receipts: sharing receipts, regardless of 
whether a profit were realized or not, would discourage 
making new roads; besides, as already shown, profits 
increase faster than receipts. There is an apparent 
reason the other way, in the fact that bookkeeping can 
juggle profits; but it ought to be easy to guard against 
that. 

To encourage companies to make the roads even if they 
had to give them up in time, the rent could be made 
low because of the reversion, just as in other leases, 
or the lessor could have the option of paying for the 
lessee's improvements or renewing his lease. 

As stated in several cases before, it is desirable that 
the roads of any city should all be under one control, 
to save duplication of roads and managers, and also 
to facilitate transfer tickets. But that need not 
involve the city's running them. In Germany each 
city's roads generally belong to a single company, but 
the city regulates them very well indeed. 

True, the single management prevents the public hav- 
ing the benefit of competition in fares, but the pub- 
lic could not very well have that, anyhow, unless more 
than one road runs through a street, tho of course there 
is room for some competition in parallel streets. Low 
391 (n). Rates of fares can be secured, not only by govern- 
f^''^- ment regulation, but also by the tendency 

of a broad-minded management like that of the Metro- 
politan Traction Company in New York in its earlier 
years, to see its own advantage in inviting large business. 
That management, however, has fallen off terribly since 
it was a new broom. Moreover, low fares are often 
secured by the general influence of those vast indis- 
tinguishable agencies which go to make up habit and 
popular opinion. The fares in Columbus are seven for 
25 cents, and in Rockford twenty-five general tickets, or 
fifty school tickets, for $t, and on one line in Cleveland, 
three cents. 

In Glasgow and probably some other places, they 
have "zone" fares, starting very low for a mile from 



43 o The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 391 ^ 

the centre, and then increasing mile by mile, until 
they run up to ten cents. The result is that the. work- 
men do not go to the country, but remain huddled in 
the zones of cheap fares. 

391 (0) Deteno- Altho I havc tried to state the situation 
rating 'private fairly, the reader in favor of municipal 

service may com- -^ . r - < -i mi 111 

pel municipal Operation of street railways will probably 
experiment, assume that I havc made the best case 

against it that I could. And now (1907), six years 
since I made most of that case, I am bound to confess 
that regarding the rapid-transit roads of my own city 
of New York, I am much less opposed to the experi- 
ment of municipal operation. In stating this, I shall 
probably at least be held free of the charge of saying 
it without a realization of the enormous risks of the 
experiment. When I made my case, the great 

monopolies controlling the roads were newly organized. 
They were more than suspected of holding their fran- 
chises in consequence of great political corruption, and 
they were on their good behavior. Moreover, as already 
said, they were new brooms. Since then they have 
had time to grow careless and indifferent, Tammany 
is again in power, and apparently there is no agency 
to curb their shameless and (it may perhaps be hoped) 
short-sighted avarice. To swell their profits, they have 
introduced obstacles in their system of transfers, and, 
in order to operate only crowded cars, have steadily 
diminished the number of them in slack hours, and of 
those continuing beyond points — such as the Grand Cen- 
tral Depot and the 86th Street car-barns — where many 
passengers disembark, thus forcing many changes and 
waits. At points where it was once easy to find a car 
with an empty seat, nearly every passing car now con- 
tains many passengers holding on to the straps; the 
passenger who once had a good chance for a seat, is now 
often lucky if he can get a foothold on the steps or the 
running-board , the tracks are so poorly cared for, and 
left unsanded, that on going up hill the slipping cars are 
passed by people on foot ; and the motormen frequently 



^ 39^ p] Municipal Public Works. 431 

pass wotild-be passengers on the few occasions when 
the cars are not full. Early in 1907, the companies 
claimed that many men were laid off by sickness. A 
motorman told me that the men were playing sick 
to get a chance to hunt up better jobs, and concluded: 
"This road has gone onto the bum-." The day when 
this is written, I read Dr. Clark's statement that in 
Australasia, a government that did not provide decent 
railroad accommodations could not hold office. True, 
"they manage these things differently in France" (and 
Australasia), but despite the influences controlHng elec- 
tions in New York and America generally, the abuses 
of many of our city railroads have reached the point 
where any change of management stands a good chance 
of being a change for the better; and even if one should 
turn out for the worse, it would at least bring with it 
much valuable education. The corruption of all gov- 
ernment agents by the railway corporations is so great, 
that it may make all attempts at mere government 
regulation farcical, and perhaps the corruption in gov- 
ernment operation would be no greater. 

39) fp).someother ^^^^. 7^^ ^^fore wc have tried all the 
experiments de- possibilities of regulation, we should not 
be driven to the extreme of municipal 
operation. The recommendation already made of 
more commissions for the regulation of private man- 
agement, might be tried for cities, as it has been (but 
none too effectively) tried for states; and the powers 
and duties and emoluments of the commissions that 
exist, enlarged so as to enable them (if they will) to 
hold the roads up to the greatest practicable efficiency. 
The commissioners would probably best be elected by 
the people. The state railroad commissions, which 
have not been elected by the people, have generally 
been mere creatures of the railroads, and often appointed 
at their recommendation. Yet the work of railroad 
commissions is easily open to the judgment of the 
people and, if they were elective, to prompt punishment 
for dereliction. That it might be prompt, the term of 
office should be annual, with indefinite eligibility to 



43 2 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 391^ 

reelection. If such commissions always fail, the only 
remaining experiment seems to be government operation. 
It should be remembered that under any system of 
mere government regulation, the responsibility is 
divided between the railway corporation and the govern- 
ment; while under government operation, the respon- 
sibility would be upon the government alone, and the 
issue would be clean-cut. That it would be as effective 
and permanent a remedy as the out-and-out advocates 
of municipal operation generally believe, I do not dare 
to hope; but the logic of events is converting many 
opponents into advocating it, at least as an experi- 
ment. Meanwhile, I let my arguments against it 
stand as they were originally written. They attempt 
to show the dangers of the experiment, and there is 
some slight chance that they may fall under the eyes 
of a person here and there who may have some little 
influence in guarding against those dangers. And 
behind it all, I have a misgiving that the result of the 
experiment, if it is tried before the arguments find 
their natural way to oblivion, may after all only con- 
firm their validity. 

__^ ... , , We come now to Government's rela- 

tions to waterworks. We imd them m 
many of the ruins of early civilizations, especially the 
Roman; and we find the waterworks themselves in 
many primitive civilizations of our own day, in Asia 
and Africa; and we know that all these were or are 
government works, because under the conditions before 
modern civilization, cooperation was never equal to 
such work. 

In modern Europe, especially in the more paternal 
states, municipal ownership is the rule. In America, 
waterworks were generally begun by private com- 
panies, but the tendency has been more and more for 
the municipality to buy out the companies or start its 
own works. In the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, most of the works were private; at its close, 
probably most of them were public. The size of places 



§ 392 ^] [Municipal Public Works. 433 

has affected the question materially: the little works 
of small places have been more readily constructed bv 
private oapital. The works in cities of over 30,000 
are generally municipal. A peculiarity about water- 
392 ra; whufit "^o^^s favors this, tho the waste and cor- 
for municipaiiza- ruptiou in building government water- 
^'°"' works have often been frightful ; but after 

they are once built they require little management, 
and so afford little field for corruption. 

Yet while water-supplies have sometimes been well 
and economically managed by cities, much — ^probably 
most of the New York work, has consisted of enormous 
swindles. 

But on the other hand, early in 1900, a gigantic 
corporation loomed up in possession of all the water- 
rights affecting cities of the lower Hudson valley, in- 
cluding New York itself. This attained the proportions 
of a natural monopoly, and public opinion was strongly 
in favor of the municipality forestalling the monopoly. 
The scheme was laid away at least for the time. 
392 (b). Health Waterworks ought at least to be under 

questions. -j^j^g absolutc coutrol of a Board of Health 

that cannot possibly have any financial interest in them : 
lately Philadelphia and Passaic were full of typhoid 
from their water-supplies, and in Philadelphia, long after 
the remedy was plain, it was impossible to apply it, 
because rivals who wanted to benefit by the work, got 
the politicians at loggerheads about it. 

Many cities are sorely perplexed over the purity of 
their water-supply. Before Pasteur discovered bacteria, 
it was quite the custom, as in Chicago, for waterside 
cities to empty their sewage into the water to whose 
position they owed their existence, and then, unless the 
water was salt, pump it back to drink. After Pasteur 
taught them where their typhoids came from, they ran 
their sewers, where practicable, a mile or two farther 
out, and drank a higher dilution. They are now learning 
that this will not do, and are struggling with questions 
of inland supply, deep wells, filtration plants and sew- 
age disposal. Probably the best and cheapest solu- 



434 ^^^ Promotion of Convenience. [§ 392 6 

tion of the question is one that political capacity has 
not yet risen to. Laws might be passed (in fact some 
have been passed, but neglected, in New York, for in- 
stance,) to prohibit the pollution of fresh water (or of 
salt either, where bathing can be harmed), and requiring 
the rational and even profitable disposal of sewage that 
the soil is crying for ; but it would be very optimistic to 
expect the enforcement of such laws before people be- 
come more intelligent and law-abiding. A minor diffi- 
culty would be that sometimes states would have to 
concur to protect the confluents of a watershed lying in 
both. Such laws would be very interesting experiments, 
however, and perhaps not more hopeless than most 
attempts at betterment by statute. 
„„„,,.. . . , Waste is a frequent evil. Recently in 

322(c). Municipa! ^ -i 4.1, . . xi • j 

management Livcrpool, it was lound that two thirds 

naturally wasteful. ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ running into the city, ran 

out again through leaks and taps needlessly left open. 
This is probably about the case in the vast majority 
of American cities to-day, at least where meters are not 
used. Under private management, the company would 
be taking care of its own supply: now the politicians 
take care, and characteristically poor care, of the public's. 

Yet while private companies are apt to do better 
work and at less cost for actual service, it cannot be 
denied that in any sort of service, their interests may 
sometimes conflict with the interests of the com- 
munity: they may render less service than the com- 
munity needs, as was shown in the lack of salt-water 
mains for putting out fires when the San Francisco 
earthquake broke the fresh-water mains from the in- 
terior. The water-supply was the affair of a private 
company which had obstructed providing a supply 
for fires from the bay. 

Waterworks are, of course, generally a natural 
monopoly — competition which involves more than one 
pipe-line in a street, is not practically possible, even 
in large places because of the large size of the mains; 
and has not been at all frequent. Moreover, when it 
is, it is a frightful nuisance from frequent tearing up 



§ 393 <^] Municipal Public Works. 435 

of the streets. On the whole, then, municipal water- 
works are . to be approved, despite municipal cor- 
ruption, and largely for the same reason that makes 
the Post-Office a success: everybody watches (387, 
389/) the water-supply, and if it is bad, complains 
and votes against the government. 

Li ht'n Gasworks are cheaper to build than 

'^ '"^" waterworks, and, perhaps for that reason, 
are not as generally municipalized: so competition is 
more frequent in gas than in water: two or three com- 
panies frequently having gas-pipes in the same street — 
a condition facilitated by their pipes being much smaller 
than water-mains. 

393 fa;, cmoes The _ argument for municipal ownership, 

municipalization then, is not as strou?: as for water, es-oe- 

ip^^ than ujcii^py * *^ -^ 

pecially when we consider that gas is not 
used by everybody, and requires more management 
than, water after the works are erected. Cities not 
making their own gas generally charter more than 
one company. In America, of course, they charter as 
many as can bribe the authorities, tho fortunately 
some of the authorities cannot be bribed. In Europe 
generally, people do not have their streets torn up by 
more than one company, and they regulate the prices 
and quality of the gas produced by that one. Ham- 
burg has even leased her own works to a private cor- 
poration, but she keeps her hand on that corporation. 
In all of Germany there is but one city (Frankfort) 
chartering more than one company, and gas is higher 
there than anywhere else in Germany. 

The experience regarding municipal ownership of gas- 
plants, corresponds with the conditions just given. 
Paternal Germany leads off, of course, with a majority 
of the big cities owning gas-plants. The smaller cities, 
as in the case of waterworks with us (and apparently 
the world over), do not municipalize gas as generally 
as the large ones. Great Britain, notwithstanding it 
is, among European nations, at the other extreme from 
Germany as regards paternalism, nevertheless comes 



436 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 393 "^ 

next with proportion of municipal gasworks, they being 
about one in three, and certainly increasing* 

Glasgow and several other Scotch cities, likewise 
some German cities, light the courts, halls and stairs 
of tenement-houses with gas, and Glasgow makes the 
owners pay for most of it. Some cities, tho, spend 
as much for it as in lighting streets — this on the prin- 
ciple, of course, that a light saves a policeman. 

Despite England's lack of paternalism, she comes 
next to Germany in municipalizing gasworks. Public 
opinion demands them in both those countries more 
generally than in the rest -of Europe, there being a 
larger proportion of people given to reading, who 
want abundant light, and who can afford to pay for it. 
393 r6;. Cheapened Apparently municipal ownership has 
by it in some cheapened gas in Great Britain and Ger- 
piacesm urope. jy^^^y^ jj^ jg often Supplied as low as 

twenty-five cents, while in America it is often above 
a dollar. But it may be even yet too early to be sure 
that it is not cheapened in Great Britain and Ger- 
many by an increase of taxation. In London at the 
time of writing, the gas is very bad. 

Whether we would better adopt municipalization on 
the chances, we can tell better after we have attained 
decent government. If most of our present city govern- 
ments were giving us gas for fifty cents, they would 
be adding more than another fifty cents to our tax- 
bills, by corruption in the works. 

We have not had much experience in that sort of 
finance in America, in connection with gas, because 
there have been few municipal plants. But the book- 
keeping for gas and water and electricity has been 
393 (c). American^ something fcarful and wonderful in the 
'S^r^n^' direction of trying to show a profit. Pub- 
discouraging lislicd rcports are very unreliable. The 

mayor of Philadelphia lately reported a year's profit 
of $160,000 on gas, while a Massachusetts committee 
investigating Philadelphia experience for their ov/n 
guidance, reported a loss of $1,000,000.* The gen- 

* Daniels, op cit. 



§ 393^] Municipal Public Works. 437 

eral American experience in municipalities operating 
gas-plants, has been very slight: people are too afraid 
of the political rings, and the rings can get too much 
out of the existing companies for letting them alone. 
A few towns have bought their local gasworks within 
the last score of years; but on the whole, people do 
not trust universal-suffrage government far enough to 
want to disturb, in its favor, the existing state of 
affairs. Richmond and Philadelphia have long had 
their own works, but tho Philadelphia has owned hers 
for more than half a century, she has lately leased 
them to a private corporation, municipal management 
being a failure, probably owing to corruption. The 
lease fell in in 1905, and was renewed for seventy- 
five years, by a corrupt government on terms that the 
community would not stand, and the government was 
ousted in consequence. Toledo, after ten years' use 
of a municipal natural-gas plant, leased it to a private 
company at a rental insufficient to pay interest on a 
seventh of what it cost, and finally sold it at a tenth 
of its cost. Corruption was suspected in both transac- 
tions. 

By 1905, the lighting of New York had become so 
monopolized that, at the time of this writing, many 
citizens who distrust that city's capacity to manage an 
industry, think a municipal lighting plant would be 
better risked than a continuation of existing conditions. 
And the same condition is rapidly developing regarding 
the surface railways. 

393 (d). Peculiar There seems no doubt that the Rich- 
ease//? Richmond, niond, Virginia, public gas-plant had more 
than paid for itself over twenty years ago, has paid 
into the city treasury over $300,000, has reduced the 
price of gas from $1.50 to $1.00, and has furnished 
free gas for streets and public buildings, worth $500,000 
more.* All of which proves much municipal political 
capacity in Richmond, but unfortunately does not prove 
it anywhere else. 

* Zueblin, op. cit. 



438 The Promotion oj Convenience. [§393<^ 

Since the foregoing paragraph was written, the Rich- 
mond bookkeeping has been proved fallacious,* the 
works have been proved to have been run at a loss, 
and to need renovation. But I let the paragraph stand 
as one more illustration of the uncertainty of evidence 
in these matters. 

393 (e). other In Cleveland the gas company pays into 

American cities. ^\^q ^ity treasury 6^ per cent. — Professor 
Zueblin does not say whether of receipts or profits — 
probably not thinking it any more v/orth looking up 
than I do. The people have just voted against 
municipal electricity. 

Until this year, 1907, Hamilton, Ohio, was very 
proud of her municipally operated gas and electric 
plants. The state auditor now reports that from 
Jan. I, '03, to Jan. i, '06, $35,000 dead claims had 
accumulated, and a debt of $13,431; that the adminis- 
tration was 

"marked with evidence of mismanagement, extravagance and 
unbusinesslike methods . . . the employment of inexperienced 
men [with pulls?] to superintend important work where both 
mechanical and electrical skill were necessary . . . cost of 
production at times exceeded the schedule rates charged for 
the service. ..." 

Stubs and original memoranda of various kinds were 
missing, there was a shortage in the secretary's accounts, 
and the surety bonds of many officials had not been 
renewed in years. In the words of the report: 

"Officials, ex-officials, prominent citizens and others were 
enjoying free service; while these accounts were duly charged 
on the books, apparently no effort had been made toward 
their collection or adjustment. Several individual accounts 
ranged from one hundred to eleven hundred dollars." 

It need hardly be reiterated that the truth as to the 
success of gas municipalization so far, is hard to get at. 
In Chicago, for instance, chartered accountants claim 
that the municipal gas-plant has been running at a loss, 
while the mayor claims that it has been running at a 
profit. 



§393/] Municipal Public Works. 439 

Dr. Bemis (quoted by Professor Ztieblin) says that all 
the municipal gas-plants are succeeding. It is edifying 
to have such definite information regarding the Phila- 
delphia one (which Professor Zueblin, after quoting 
'Dr. Bemis; says "was the football of politics . . . 
over half a century"), not to speak of those of Rich- 
mond, Toledo and Hamilton — so edifying as to give 
some impression of the quality of the information 
regarding the others. Other authorities say that the 
desire of the authorities to make a good showing, 
combined with bad systems of bookkeeping, make it 
impossible to tell whether they are succeeding or not. 

In short, there had been no magic in municipal 
operation to make it different from the operation 
previously quite general in American cities. 

Professor Zueblin states that "in Great Britain . . . 
over 100,000,000,000 cubic feet are consumed by half 
the number of people that consume 50,000,000,000 in 
this country". This he attributes to municipal opera- 
tion. Whether it is at the expense of the taxpayers 
he does not say, perhaps because nobody knows yet, 
tho there is a growing suspicion that it is, — and Pro- 
fessor Zueblin plainly thinks that it ought to be! 
393 (/;. General Citics can do Something for the gas- 
considerations. supply without owning it : they can keep 
it up to standard and regulate prices — the German cities 
and many others do that without needing competition 
(393 ^) • Some of the German cities have their gas tested 
every day, but that is probably more than many of our 
cities could do with any confidence in the test. 

Besides the argument (which may not exist) of cheap- 
ness of gas and water, if people think it is cheap, or get 
their supply at a fixed price, as is generally often the 
case with municipalized water, they will use more, and 
that is good for them. Moreover, for light, a munici- 
pality is sure of at least one very valuable customer — 
namely itself. Some Continental cities use nearly 
quarter of what is made, but that looks as if the people 
did not use as much privately as the English, or even 
our people, do. 



440 The Protection of Rights. [§ 393^ 

393 (g) Eiec- As to electricity, no existing state of 

tricity. affairs had to be disturbed to municipa- 

lize it : so our people have municipalized it much more 
generally than gas. Yet the results are doubtful. 

Duluth claims to have saved its people in seven 
years $631,000 in reductions of rates on water and gas, 
and to have accumulated and invested in extending 
the systems, $121,000. 

Detroit claims that in the ten years ending with 
June, 1895, she lit her streets at $1 less per arc light 
per year than Buffalo, and paid out of profits for a 
million-dollar plant. 

Logansport, Indiana, claims to have provided the 
people with good electric light at a moderate price 
since 1894, to have had all city lighting in streets and 
public buildings free, and to have paid out of proceeds 
$100,000 for increase of plant. 

Jacksonville, Fla., claims to have, during about 
eleven years preceding 1906, reduced prices of elec- 
tricity to citizens, 75 per cent., and paid out of profits 
for $365,000 worth of plant, plus interest on such bonds 
as were issued at the start. 

On the other hand, after trying the municipal electric 
street -lighting plant for eighteen years, the people of 
Easton, Pa., are demanding that the city councils 
abandon it and procure lighting from the private cor- 
poration. Mayor March, v/ho advocates municipal 
ownership when it can give efficient service, has declared 
that the condition of the streets of the city through 
defective lighting is dangerous from a police point of 
view and unbearable from the point of viev/ of the 
citizen, and favors private service. 

Offers have been made by private corporations at 
$15 a year less per lamp than it now costs the city for 
the service which is causing constant complaint. It is 
estimated that the city has thrown away for several years 
from $4,000 to $5,000 a year in maintaining the plant. 

Mayor March says: "If we intend to continue light- 
ing the city by our own plant, we must run the plant 
as a private corporation would run it, not only with 



§ 393^] Municipal Public Works. 441 

econoiny, but also by constantly repairing and renewing 
the machinery to keep up its efficiency. This has not 
been done. I feel that public opinion will insist upon 
the streets being lighted by a private company because 
the public, as well as I, believe it can be done for far 
less expense than it is being done by the city." 

Select Councilman David W. Nevin says: "In my 
opinion the operation of municipal plants amounts 
merely to- the creation of a number of places to be 
filled by local pohticians. These men get salaries, but 
have no interest in the plants as long as they continue 
their 'pulls' and hold their jobs." 

That same Mayor Head of Nashville whose experi- 
ence with the city railroads was given, proved again 
in relation to light what municipal regulation without 
even ownership, may accomplish. By judicious work 
in the legislature he got the gas company to reduce 
its price from $1.50 per thousand feet to $1, and its 
stock has risen from ninety cents to a dollar and a 
quarter. 

He says * that when he began building a municipal 
electric plant, the existing company reduced its rates 
from eighteen cents to twelve, and made many con- 
tracts at six. He ultimately took over the street- 
lighting from them, and did it the first year twice as 
freely as they had the preceding year, at a cost of 
$33,500, as against their charge of $49,270. 

In 1 90 1 the aldermen of Worcester, Mass., found that 
in all the cities from which they could get reliable data, 
the cost of electricity from municipal plants averaged 
3.4 cents per lamp-hour, while Worcester was paying a 
private corporation 2.8. 

In 1906, Alexandria, Va., sold for $3000 an electric 
plant which had cost $17,000, four Indiana cities were 
looking for customers for theirs, and Cleveland had 
voted against Mayor Tom Johnson's recommendation 
to make one. On the other hand, many American cities 
were claiming success for municipal electric-lighting 

* Proceedings of National Municipal League, 1906. 



442 The Protection of Rights. [§ 393^ 

plants, whether with better warrant than Richmond's 
long claims for her gas-plant, time will show. 

Great Britain leads even Germany in municipal electric 
lighting, possibly being quicker to seize novelties; and 
Germany has more electric plants run by private cor- 
porations, than gas-plants: possibly because the capital- 
ists are quicker than the government. 
393 (h). Eiec- But not everybody uses electricity : so 

tricity versus gas. fg^j.^ -j^qj^ nearly as many as burn .gas. The 

justification, then, for municipalizing it is not nearly so 
obvious. But it is incomparably the best street light, 
and economizes police expenses, and prevents crime: 
the electric light has rendered many a street safe which 
great police care failed to. Municipalizing for street 
purposes would, then, perhaps be justifiable as a police 
measure, and possibly private supply may as well go 
along with street supply. 

393 fi) Ma or ^^ bearing on the conveniences thus far 

Darwiri on utilities considered, and one — housing the poor, to 
area y rea e . -^^ considered later (431 ff.), a table in 
Major Leonard Darwin's "Municipal Trade" (London, 
1903) shows that from March 31, 1893, to March 31, 
1902, municipal waterworks, gasworks, tramways, mar- 
kets and some minor undertakings have been con- 
ducted at apparent profits, while electric works, bath- 
and wash-houses, burial-grounds, working-class dwellings, 
harbors, piers, docks and quays, have been conducted at 
apparent losses. But he does not consider the figures 
entirely reliable, and his general attitude is one which 
American experience confirms — that the tendency of the 
bookkeeping is, very naturally, to throw doubtful points 
in favor of profit. 

^^, _ , L There has been a good deal of discussion 

394. Telephone. 1,1 • • i- • -1 j_ 1 1 

lately over municipalizing the telephone. 

Perhaps we can sum up most of what we have been 

learning regarding government operation in connection 

with that subject. After paying for telephones in five 

buildings in four cities, I find it apparently the hardest 



§ 395] Municipal Public Works. 443 

business to manage decently, of which I have knowl- 
edge. How, then, about the fitness of the governments 
to undertake it. It is doubtful whether its real usefulness 
is wide enough to strongly justify government being 
burdened with it ? But there is no doubt that it is essen- 
tially a monopoly: for competition seems next to im- 
possible, because every user wants to reach every other 
user, and the service would be almost useless if split 
up among several companies. Therefore if government 
ever becomes fit to control this most difficult of con- 
veniences, the telephone might properly be among the 
first undertaken. 

Now as long as there is private competi- 

st^r^ets'^^Tunnels ^^*^^ ^"^ water, gas and electric conduits 
for pipes, wires, etc. of all kinds, it is a great nuisance to 
doubly or trebly tear up the streets to 
enable several companies to construct and repair their 
conduits, and it not only is ugly and obstructive to 
travel, but it spreads malaria. It is too late to effect 
all the economies that were once possible, by combining 
into a trust all the companies dealing in any one of the 
commodities, as now is frequently done with new ones, 
because the competing companies have already torn 
many towns to pieces, and wasted a great deal of money 
in duplicating each other's works. But any trust that 
may be made, need not continue using all the pipes, 
and tearing up to keep them in repair; but if it does 
not use all, it would have to tear up for new connections 
to replace the discarded ones; and so far as it does 
not use all, there would have been just that much 
waste. 

For gas and water both (not to speak of sewerage, 
electricity and pneumatic tubes) there is everywhere a 
most painful need for a central combination to put 
all the conduits in each street into one good tunnel, 
abundantly large and convenient, where they could be 
placed as needed, and taken out and repaired without 
the inconvenience, waste and sickness always due to 
disturbing the streets . Some of the London underground 



444 'The Promotion of Convenience. [§395 

railway tunnels carry pipes and are, on the whole, success- 
ful in it. Paris has a pipe system in some of its sewers. 
It is not as complete as it might be, but very admirable 
as far as it goes. Paris puts the gas-pipes and electric 
wires under the sidewalks instead of the roadway. 
Milan in its splendid new Via Dante has galleries under 
the sidewalks and right by the houses, for everything 
except the sewerage: that goes under the roadway 
as usual. New York has lately built a few "pipe 
galleries" in connection with the subway railroads, but 
of course not as many as there ought to have been, and 
the specifications for the new subways require them 
throughout. 

As the concert of action necessary for pipe galleries 
cannot be had from half a dozen independent companies 
squabbling over each of the conveniences, pipe-gallery 
or tunnel companies may be chartered, but by the time 
a city needs them, the then existing gas and water com- 
panies would fight against moving their own pipes: 
so after all, the only way to get the best results would 
seem to be for the city to own all the interests (it need 
not operate any) or at least the tunnels or galleries, and 
compel their use. For the government to take the 
whole lot by eminent domain, and fix them up right, 
once for all, would certainly be the best solution — for 
any government fit to do it without the frightful waste 
and corruption of most government work in American 
cities. Tunnels would probably cost American tax- 
payers many times what they ought to, but they might 
be worth having at the price, or for reasons of health, 
at almost any price. 

Most American cities let companies use their streets 
for pipes and wires without paying for the privilege; 
most European cities get large revenues from them: 
so probably, without municipalizing so far as to have 
the cities do the work of the companies, it might be 
well to make municipal tunnels, and charge the com- 
panies for the use of them. 

Kansas City gets ten cents per foot per year for the 
privilege of laying down conduits for wires. 



§397] Municipal Public Works. 445 

396. Advertising Oil© very novel and useful source of 
s'g"s. revenue, in Berlin, comes from regulating 

advertising signs. The city keeps them in good taste, 
and gets seventy thousand dollars a year for the privileges 
of them. Of course such a proceeding is still far beyond 
our political capacity. 

„- „ Professor Daniels ("Public Finance", 

Edition of 1899, pp. 277-9) admirably 
summarizes conclusions on the topics of this chapter 
as below. Up to 1907 the aspects of the case are not 
materially changed, tho farther developed, as we shall 
see in the next chapter, 

"A careful sifting of the evidence presented on both sides 
seems to establish the following conclusions as highly probable : 
(i) The price charged by private companies for the supply of 
water exceeds by twenty-five to forty-three per cent, the 
price charged by municipal waterworks; (2) the cost of the 
water-supply by municipalities probably exceeds the cost 
incurred by private companies, tho how far the increased cost 
augments general taxes it is difficult to say; (3) while the price 
of gas in England under both systems is markedly less than the 
price of gas under either system in the United States, the rate 
of reduction in gas prices in the United States since 1870 seems 
to have been more rapid than in England; (4) the cost of pro- 
ducing gas has probably been less under private than under 
public management. ... It is practically certain that muni- 
cipalities have paid more than private companies for labor both 
in England and in the United States. 'This failing', says Pro- 
fessor Bemis naively, 'if it be a failing, is quite common in 
public works. Many consider it an advantage for public works 
thus to set the example of good wages.' Our complacency on 
this score might perhaps be just if the example set by our 
public works were uniformly an example of good wages for 
good work. When, as is so common, the practice of our public 
works amounts to high pay for the inefficient service of party 
hacks, the 'advantage' of such a policy is more than dubious. 
(5) The price charged for gas by public companies in England 
appears to be less by seven or eight per cent, than the charge 
made by private companies, but no such general assertion can 
be made with respect to the United States; (6) public electric- 
light plants in this country cannot be said generally to furnish 
electricity at a lower cost or price than private companies. 
The evidence rather tends to show that the advantage lies with 
private companies, especially as long as electrical apparatus is 



446 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 397 

evidently in the transitional stage. (7) Local transportation 
has been undertaken by several British municipalities with 
varying success. In this country it is as yet untried. When 
all circumstances are taken into consideration it would appear 
that our transportation service is not only immeasurably more 
efficient than the British tramway service, but that the charges 
for distance traversed are really less in the United States 
than upon the most successful of municipal lines in Great 
Britain." 



CHAPTER XXX. 

LATEST ASPECTS OP GOVERNMENT OPERATION. 

Most of the preceding treatment of the problems of 
municipalization was written in 1900, tho I have tried 
to bring its details up to date. As to general conclu- 
sions, those of Professor Daniels were stated in 1899. 
These words are written late in 1906. On searching 
for evidence of what has happened during the inter- 
vening time, I have been surprised to find how scant 
and conflicting it is. Two things are plain — the efflores- 
cence of 'municipalization up to 1890 has met with a 
serious blight; and the testimony on the subject is 
colored by that difference between men 
A?i?toSnl°n"s'f^' ^""^ which bears the names of Plato and Aris- 
totle, but which began long before them. 
The idealists find municijjalization triumphant, the men 
of facts find no sufficient evidence that it is. 

In Great Britain, the advocates of municipal operation 
say that the statistics abundantly prove its success. 
The opponents say that they do not. Professor Daniels 
doubts whether "any real financial profit whatever has 
399. Major Darwin emerged". Major Darwin* thinks that 
^0 1903. ''the net result to the nation will be neither 

a considerable financial loss nor a considerable financial 
gain". The report of the Parliamentary Committee 
already alluded to shows little confidence in the statistics 
either way, saying: "The auditors are not accountants, 

* Op. cit. The most detailed work yet given to the subject. 

447 



448 The Promotion of Convenience. [§399 

and are not, in the opinion of the committee, properly 
qtiaHfied to discharge the duties which should devolve 
upon them." Major Darwin supports most of the con- 
victions already set forth. 

"In the United States . . . the balance of advantages and 
disadvantages tells heavily against Municipal Trade. ... In 
England, Municipal Trade is more likely than private enter- 
prise to introduce corruption. ... As regards gasworks, the 
results have been shown to be faulty. . . . No material gain 
or loss has directly resulted from Municipal Trade, altho taxa- 
tion is now being increased thereby. . .*. The arguments are 
telling strongly against Municipal House-building. . . . Local 
authorities are advancing too rapidly in the paths of Municipal 
Trade." 

He agrees with Lord Avebury's opinion that so far 

* * There can indeed be little doubt that there are fewer work- 
men's dwellings now than there would have been if the muni- 
cipalities had not built any. ... As regards house operations, 
a particularly strong case can be made against this work being 
largely entrusted to municipal employees"; that it would "be 
most unwise to base our policy for the future on the hope of 
any financial benefits to either consumers or ratepayers from 
Municipal Trade " ; that " as regards ordinary competitive trades, 
the case for municipal trade in fact breaks down utterly"; 
that "the logical thing to do would be to establish a separate 
elected body for the management of such enterprises, the 
number of votes to be given by each voter being solely based 
on the amount of the rates paid by him" (an approach to the 
recommendations of the Tilden Commission in New York) , and 
that "Local Authorities in England . . . have gone too far in 
certain directions in their acceptance of socialist ideas." He 
quotes John Stuart Mill to the effect that "the reasons in favor 
of leaving to voluntary associations all such things as they are 
competent to perform, would exist in equal strength if it were 
certain that the work itself would be as well or better done'by 
public officers", the reasons being "the mischief of overloading 
the chief functionaries of government with demands on their 
attention, and diverting them from duties which they alone 
can discharge, to objects which can be sufficiently well attained 
without them; the danger of unnecessarily swelling the direct 
power and direct influence of government, . . . and the inex- 
pediency of concentrating in a dominant bureaucracy all the 
skill and experience in the management of large interests, and 
all the power of organized action existing in the community ; a 
practice which keeps the citizen in a relation to the government 
like that of children to their guardians, and is a main cause 



§ 4oo] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 449 

e 

of the inferior capacity for political life which has hitherto 
characterized the over-governed countries of the Continent." 

400. Municipal '^^^ very latest contributor of British 

operation, retarding experience is Professor Hugo R. Meyer.* 
eveopmen. jj^^ thesis is that municipal operation 

retards and limits the supplying of facilities, in fact 
often prevents them. This he illustrates by the general 
facts that Great Britain, where that system e.xists much 
more widely than with us, has proportionally about 
one-quarter the ^reet-railway facilities, one-third the 
electric-lighting facilities, and less than one-quarter the 
telephone facilities that are enjoyed in the United States, 
where these matters have been left to private initiative. 
Glasgow, the banner city of municipal railways, has, 
in proportion to population, but one-third the facilities 
of Boston, and, distance being considered (only relatively, 
Glasgow has no distance, the roads not going far from 
the center), the fares are, in labor cost, much higher 
than those of Boston. In consequence of the backward- 
ness of these industries. Professor Meyer claims, 120,000 
British people have missed opportunities of employment, 
and been forced to emigration or unemployment; and 
that so far as electric machinery is concerned, England 
has lost her old place as one of the world's chief sources 
of supply for mechanical apparatus. 

Professor Meyer seems to prove that the facts (of 
which there can be no question) result from the cause 
to which he attributes them. The most obvious and 
incontrovertible of his arguments is that a city ov/ning 
a plant for any purpose, must attack itself to introduce a 
new one or a substitute; while, if a plant is owned by a 
private company, a competing company feels no tender- 
ness for it. Private companies not only find in compe- 
tition their very reason for existence, but are notoriously 
readier than government bodies to adopt improvements : 
the Boston Elevated Railway Company, according to 

* "Municipal Ownership in Great Britain" (1906), a work to 
which I am greatly indebted. 



450 The Promotion o] Convenience. [§ 400 

Professor Meyer, "scrapped " four equipments of motors 
in twelve years. The effect of this consideration in 
making the British cities owning gas-plants, oppose the 
introduction of electricity, is shown in the figures 
already given. Another obvious consideration is of 
course the comparative slowness of all government 
operations, as compared with those impelled by self- 
interest. Mr. Farrar, for nearly twenty years Secre- 
tary of the Board of Trade (quoted by Professor Meyer), 
said in 1883: 

"All experience shows that whilst capital will always . . . 
support a new invention, if there is prospect of success, there 
is no such active motive power on the part of governing bodies; 
they take up a thing when it is done, but they are not persons 
generally willing, nor perhaps are they the best persons, to take 
up a new invention." 

The claim that leaving government to 
the manger^^ ^" Supply facilities, oftcn means not supply- 
ing them at all, is proved by many in- 
stances where municipalities have .obtained from 
Parliament (which in such matters virtually performs 
the functions of our state governments) powers to do all 
sorts of things, in order to keep private companies from 
doing them, and have not done them at all. When a 
municipality has parliamentary sanction to undertake a 
matter of the kind, no other agency can do it within the 
limits. In October '99 over a hundred local govern- 
ments which had obtained such sanctions were not using 
them, and of course not permitting anybody else to do 
the service. 

Professor Meyer also cites several instances of the 
Association of Municipal Corporations and the Associa- 
tion of Urban District Councils, blocking schemes for 
supplying large territory with light and power at the low 
rates possible only to large operations, because of fear 
that the companies would underbid the municipalities. 
Yet in several cases the districts thus deprived of cheap 
supply, contained municipalities which had no supply 
at all. A striking instance (I forget whether I found it 



§ 400 c] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 451 

400 (b). English i^ Meyer) is the killing by the municipali- 
municipaiization ties of a private scheme to lis:ht some thir- 

obstructiue. x r. j j -i - ■, 

teen hundred square miles very cJieaply 
from the coal-fields, v/hile of the whole thirteen hundred 
square miles, under four square miles were lighted by 
the municipalities themselves. This recalls what we 
have seen of townships obstructing American through 
roads (384 c). These associations were even including 
in the tax-bills, the expenses of agitating to deprive the 
taxpayers of the benefit of competition. The attitude of 
the municipal governments regarding all private initi- 
ative, is like the jealous opposition of the ignorant classes 
to "capital" and "corporations". For example, in 
1905, Bethnal Green, a London borough of 130,000 
inhabitants, had no light. Its representative in Par- 
liament did not want it "at the mercy of a dividend- 
earning company", as it was "notorious that the 
United States" municipalities were. In the House 
400rc;. stmn- *^^ Commons in 1900, Mr. Macdona said: 
giing pHuaie " There is a feeling in the country that the 
municipalities are organizing themselves 
into a gigantic monopoly with a view to strangling pri- 
vate enterprise." Aldermen Bussey of Poplar (169,000 
inhabitants) said before a committee of the House of 
Lords in 1905, that his town "would not take current 
from a company at a lower rate than the town could 
supply it", tho the company offered it at a third less. 
In this debate, so eminent a man as John Burns con- 
tributed the specimen of Labor logic that cheapening 
the current would increase the number of the unem- 
ployed. 

When existing companies go to Parliament for re- 
newed charters, or for increased facilities of any kind, 
the municipalities often oppose power to increase capi- 
tal to extend tracks or conduits, and thus force the 
companies to se^l out to them cheap; and then for 
the private policy of expansion, comes the municipal 
policy of sitting still. Professor Meyer quotes Mr. 
Leigh, counsel to the Speaker and chairman of Com- 
mittees of the House of Commons, as saying in 1900: 



452 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 400 c 

"Municipalities never invented or initiated anything, either 
with regard to tramways or gas or electric lighting, and yet 
when a company has become flourishing, they have been rather 
forced in a corner to sell their undertaking. . . . [The munici- 
palities] have not come in for the purpose of helping . . . when 
a gas undertaking has been badly carried on, but they have 
pounced upon gas companies when they were paying their full 
dividend." 

It is not surprising, then, that Professor Meyer 
has to admit that "in the year 1898-99 all but 48 of 
the 222 municipal gas-plants of the United Kingdom 
paid the interest and sinking-fund payments properly 
charged against them". He repeats the well-known 

fact that the alleged low rates of the British city rail- 
ways are only for narrow centers and narrow zones 
around them, and calls attention to the consideration 
that municipalities, with the universally recognized 
inertness of such bodies, are very slow to extend their 
lines, and thus leave a frightful degree of overcrowding 
in cities of a grade that, with us, are not overcrowded 
appreciably. 

400 (d). Fran- Thc leading obstruction to private initia- 

chises too short, ^^^g |^g^g been a too eager demand for 

municipal ownership. The law of 1882 denied electric- 
light companies sure possession of their plants for more 
than sixteen years, at the end of which time the muni- 
cipalities had the privilege of buying. This of course 
made enterprisers very slow to risk furnishing the 
facilities. The slow development under such a system 
led to a new law in 1888 postponing the privilege of 
purchase to the end of forty-two years. Each bill 
allowed for shorter terms under special circumstances. 
Tramway companies were similarly hampered by too 
great eagerness for municipal ownership, purchasing 
privileges varying from fourteen to forty-two years. 
Permission for cable power was at first given only for 
periods of seven years. All were farther hampered by 
sundry restrictions of detail. 

I wrote, some pages back, that virtually nobody 
opposes municipal ownership , but I had nut then read 



§ 4oo^] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 453 

Professor Meyer's book, and learned that these ex- 
\Q{)(e). Owner- aggerated efforts to apply the principle 
ship loaded with had made him an opponent of it root 
operation ^^^ branch; but apparently municipal 

ownership in Great Britain practically means municipal 
operation, and the trouble begins there. There are very 
few good principles where too eager enthusiasm cannot 
be as harmful as absolute neglect. 

The result of the British policy was 
fniiumberVf ^^ that in 1 888 there were two electric-lighting 
afd^MephTnes. pl^uts at work in England; in Germany, 
under an unduly grasping policy of muni- 
cipal ownership like that of England, there were fifteen; 
in the United States there were five hundred and seventy- 
four. When, in 1888, the privilege of compulsory pur- 
chase by the municipality was limited in England to 
forty-two years, private companies began work at once, 
and were very largely bought out by municipalities on 
mutually satisfactory terms. Yet with all the municipal 
operation, the light is not yet in nearly as large a pro- 
portion of places, or used by nearly as large a propor- 
tion of people, as in the United States. 

The British policy regarding the telephone has been 
the same as regarding tramways and light. The 
government deliberately paralyzed the telephone in its 
earlier years, to protect the government-owned telegraph, 
just as the municipalities paralyzed electric lighting to 
protect their gas-plants. The result is a proportional 
use of the telephone not over a fourth that in the 
United States. 

400 rg;. "Poll- The associations of municipal govern- 

^'^^■" ments have grea.t power in Parliament, 

and block nearly all efforts of private initiative. With 
the greater openness of our legislatures to politics, 
the conditions here, with municipalities widely operating 
the franchises, would be worse. 

The matter is eating out the old purity of English 
municipal government, and reducing it toward the level 
of ours. The number of laborers in municipal employ 



454 • The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 400 /^ 

400 (h). English ^"^^^ of course been enormously increased 
municipalization bv the municipal tramwavs, electric com- 

dangerous to the •' . ■ j. /tm i i_ 

purity of gouern- panies, gas companics, etc. inese laborers, 
"^^"^- like ours, are casting solid votes for the 

administration in power, while the administration 
is open to the corruptions which big salary lists have 
injected into our own politics * (388 m). Local politics 
mans public works by 'favoritism. The Lord Provost 
of Edinburgh said to the correspondent of the Chicago 
Tribune (I am still following Professor Meyer): "So 
long as the road is under municipal management, there 
is always a temptation to provide employment in some 
way for political hangers-on. ..." 

Professor Meyer quotes several eminent Britons to the 
effect that the employees of the various municipal plants 
are already exercising a dangerous influence in politics. . 
Some publicists propose that they shall be disfranchised, 

* I am largely indebted for English experience to an important 
letter from Mr. Robert P. Porter in the New York Times lor 
October 31, 1899, and to a friend from Glasgow whose family- 
has furnished the city at least one provost, and who tells me 
that objection to municipal trading is rapidly growing, because 
of the corruption it breeds. The latter sends a copy of the Glas- 
gow Herald which sa3^s: "The citizens of Glasgow may again 
congratulate themselves upon having had a narrow escape. 
By 28 votes to 17, they have been saved frorri embarking on the 
perilous enterprise of Municipal Banking." He also writes, 
September 8, 1900: "Our rulers are emulous to become bankers 
as well as purveyors of water, light, power, telephones and 
much else, and owners of a tramway system. There is a 
growing sense of danger in Glasgow, due to rapidly increasing 
taxation occasioned by the enterprise of our city fathers. Two- 
pence on the pound of rental has just been added to the rates, 
and with increasing municipal liabilities there is prospect of 
further rise. Meantime our streets are badly paved, and are 
like to remain so as long as our rulers find they can gain greater 
distinction by proposing banking schemes than by attending to 
the streets. The lighting of the city is also not good. Lighting 
costs money and does not bring glory." The "glory" 
sought for by the "city father", seems to be rapidly becoming 
simply the glory of voting conveniences to the proletariat at 
the expense of producers. 

The side against municipal trading was also presented by Lord 
Avebury in the Contemporary Review for July, 1900. He was 
answered by Mr. Robert Donald in the next number. ^ 



§ 4'^oj] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 455 

on the same ground that regular soldiers are disfranchised 
in most countries civilized enough to have a suffrage. 
Whether the municipal employees will be worse than our 
exploiters of franchises, remains to be seen. But we 
at least get the facilities to a degree that Great Britain 
is not within sight of. 

Professor Meyer claims that municipal plant generally 
costs more to build than private plant. Some other 
observers claim differently. That municipal wages tend 
to surpass others, is matter of notoriety, even in the 
United States. 

Professor Meyer wisely concludes that 

" Industrial progress comes not from the 
400 (i). Leaves people at large, whether acting as individuals 
out the able man. or in the corporate capacity of state or city. 
It comes solely from a comparatively small body 
of men of unusual imagination, daring, power of persuasion 
and executive ability. Those men see, or believe they see, 
possibilities of development and new ways of doing things, 
where the average man sees naught but the possibility of failure. 
They have the courage of their convictions, as well as the 
power to infuse that courage into others — the possessors of the 
capital without which no new idea and no invention can be 
tested and developed. Finally, the men in question have 
executive ability, which is the power to plan, and the ability 
to select the men who can be trusted with the execution of their 
plans." 

From the chaos of statistics regarding municipal 
trading in Great Britain, two facts stand out in un- 
questioned clearness. Taxation and debt have enor- 
mously increased. Advocates claim that assets have 
been gained to offset the debt, and advantages to offset 
the taxation. Many judges of high and passionless 
authority deny both statements, and there is much 
evidence that while assets are carried in the accounts 
at cost, they have been permitted to deteriorate into 
comparative ineffectiveness. 

The English elections of 1906 and 1907 
fSff/Z/LewtfrnS^^were overwhelmingly against municipali- 
zation. 



456 The Promotion of Convenience. [§401; 

After this book was in proof, there appeared 
Mr. Robert P. Porter's "Dangers of Municipal Owner- 
ship". It deals mainly with Great Britain, and rein- 
forces with much interesting and instructive detail, the 
argument of Professor Meyer. It also makes a very 
important and, so far as I know, new contribution to 

401. Russia and "the discussion, in a demonstration that 
Socialism. Russia, the most backward of the Euro- 
pean nations (perhaps excepting Turkey), is the most 
forward in socialism — that the corrupt bureaucracy 
which is chaining Russia in her backward and tragic 
position, is simply made up of the politicians who are 
controlling, socialist fashion, a large part of the indus- 
tries which, in progressive countries, are left to private 
initiative and competition. 

Against this consideration it may be urged that the 
bureaucracy of Russia is based on hereditary privilege, 
and that a bureaucracy based on universal suffrage 
would not be open to the same objections. If universal 
suffrage has not provided equally bad bureaucracies in 
New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, the difference' is 
not great enough to upset the argument. 

I should be glad, if space and other circumstances 
justified, to give the reader many citations from Mr. Por- 
ter's work, but they are not absolutely essential to the 
discussion as already laid down, tho an examination 
of the work itself will amply repay the trouble. At 
the rate facts and arguments regarding many of the 
civic relations have been accumulating in recent years, 
nothing but the daily newspapers can keep up with 
them. Books, hovv'ever, can give fundamental prin- 
ciples and general tendencies more effectively than the 
more ephemeral publications can. 

402. Australasian The experience of Australasia * is inter- 
experience, esting and instructive. But Dr. Clark 
says it is less instructive than the European. Yet a 
summary of his statement of it may be yielded in 

* These points on Australasia are mainly condensed from 
Clark, op. cit. 



§ 404] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 457 

deference to those who think otherwise, as well as to 

its distinctive interest. 

Ann r a-^\ Thosc colonics inherited from the mother 

403. tondiTions . . . , ^ , ^ . ., 

unprecedentediy country a highly developed civil service, 
^^""^^ ®" and themselves evolved even a more cen- 

tralized government. Most of the large share of local 
services performed in America by unsalaried officers, is 
performed in Australasia by permanent civil employees 
who hold their places for life. Thus the country was 
in a position for handling government industries, far 
in advance of ours. 

Australasia was the first great civilized country to 
come into being after the railway and the telegraph 
were in use, and it was therefore very natural for her 
governments to build and operate them, as it was natural 
for earlier governments to build common roads. More- 
over, Australasian governments could borrow money in 
London to do this, cheaper than native individual 
capitalists could. The people did not want London 
syndicates exploiting the country, and all this pointed 
to government doing the work instead of private enter- 
prise. This, however, has not prevented much similar 
work by private enterprise since, in face of the fact that 
the government was first in the field — a suggestive 
symptom of the oft-proved superiority of private man- 
agement to government management, at least so far as 
concerns economy, energy and efficiency. Another symp- 
tom is the fact that nearly all the government railroads 
.» . P are run at the expense of the taxpayers, at 

railroads run at a the rate of $66,000,000 for the decade 
1894-1904, not to speak of $40,000,000 
taxes that could have been expected from private lines 
in the same period, if paid at American rates. Says 
Dr. Clark: 

"Private railways thrive in the shadow of preponderating 
government systems. Private and public street railways are 
operated harmoniously in the same cities, or in neighboring 
towns and states, and neither drives the other from the field." 

The government rate in Australasia is three cents a 



458 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 405 

mile for long rides on railroads, as against 

405. Taxes highest our two cents ; and there is an annual 

among civilized r - • at /v 1 -1 

peoples.] expense lor government m New Zealand 

of %T,^ per capita as against $21 in the 
United Kingdom, $18 in France, $10 in Germany and 
$8 in the United vStates.* 

406. Vice of And yet this is an excellent place to 
statistics. warn the young student with an illustra- 
tion against the characteristic vice of statistics — they 
generally can state but one fact, while the real situation 
consists of many; and to get at the whole truth, many 
statistics should be combined. This of course is done 
in many of the tables. But so far as I have examined, 
I find no serious effort to make a comparison of the total 
cost of government per capita in various countries. 
The figures I have given are only for the national 
governments, and it is plain that the expenses of the 
national government in the United States do not cover 
many matters that are attended to by other civilized 
national governments, but here are attended to by the 
state governments. Probably there is no great nation 
which leaves so large a part of its activities to its 
subdivisions, unless it be Germany; and, suggestively 
enough, in the cases cited, Germany," despite her great 
military and (recently) naval expenses, appears next in 
economy to the United States. New Zealand, on the 
other hand, being a colony, is exempt from many of 
the usual items of national expenditure, tho probably 
subjected to much that is with us borne by the separate 
states. And yet — and as again illustrating the com- 
plexities apt to be hidden under very simple figures — in 
the United States, the expenses of the state govern- 
ments are so small as compared with those of the national 
and local governments, that they do not affect the matter 
much, after all; while in England, and probably in 
Australasia, the general government bears many ex- 
penses — for instance, some connected with education 

* Reports of speeches of Sir Joseph Ward, Premier of New 
Zealand, in the United States in June and July, 1906, 



§ 4o8] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 459 

and the constabulary — that here are borne by the local 
governments. 

The reader will then probably conclude, as the writer 
long since did, that the value of statistics is qualitative 
rather than quantitative — that tho they generally show 
tendencies, they seldom give their actual force. 

407. Telephones '^^^ pubHc telegraphs and telephones 
and coal-mines at do not pay interest on the investment in 

Australia, though they have recently done 
so in New Zealand. But the rates are lower than in 
the United States. New Zealand operates two govern- 
ment coal-mines which are new experiments and ran 
$10,000 behind on their interest account in 1905. 

Yet notwithstanding the deficits on Australasian 
public enterprises, the confidence of capital in the re- 
sources of the country is such that, as already said, the 
government can borrow at good rates, which have, on 
the whole, been growing more favorable. 

408. Government "^^^ Australasian government being the 
success in mone"- great landlord, and being able to borrow 
®" '"^' money better than anybody else there, 
promoted settlement not only by building railroads and 
telegraphs through its lands, but also by loaning to 
settlers money for improvements. This experiment, 
tho of no direct financial interest to us, is worth recount- 
ing as a remarkable object lesson against the vulgar 
impression that trading results only in good to one party, 
and that of course the sharper party. The governments 
lend the settlers money for land and improvements, and 
so benefit them; the governments borrow the same 
money from the British bankers, pay them remunera- 
tive interest, and so benefit them; and the govern- 
ments make a margin of about one per cent, between 
what they pay and what they receive, and so benefit 
themselves. 

" The prevailing rate of interest on real-estate mortgages 
fell from seven to five per cent. — or the level of the government 
rate — during the first ten years the law [for government loans 
to landholders] was in operation. Bankers in New Zealand 



460 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 408 

interviewed as to the effect of the law, spoke of its results with- 
out disfavor, seeming to think that it might have stimulated 
business. . . . Private banks and savings institutions are able 
to place their funds securely and profitably in spite of govern- 
ment competition." 

" There has been no exigent demand for state 
409. Life insur- j^fg insurance, or the system would surely have 
extended beyond New Zealand during the thirty- 
six years it has been in existence in that colony. South 
Australia, with a state commission and export department, has 
also one of the largest cooperative farmers' commission com- 
panies in the Commonwealth, which does a business for its 
members five times as great as that done by the government, 
tho in more varied lines." 

Dr. Clark sums up his views : 

"A conclusion reached by an outsider as to 
neeative"^ ^^^ utility of government ownership, from the 

experience of Australasia, must be so largely 
qualified as to be almost negative. Public railways, telegraphs 
and land banks have succeeded. [The author must mean 
succeeded in pleasing the majority — especially the non-tax- 
payers: for he himself shows how they have not succeeded 
financially.] . . . An outside observer, unless a faddist on gov- 
ernment ownership, would probably come away from Austral- 
asia with a feeling that, after all, this issue is less important — 
as affecting the social and economic welfare of the people — 
than those who theoretically discuss the subject suppose. 
Government ownership does not bankrupt the state, deaden 
private enterprise, and kill prosperity; neither does it bring 
a nation into an industrial millennium with a bump. 

' ' The average wage-earner ... in exchanging 
demoralized''^ private for state employment sacrifices no indi- 

vidual freedom. Independent or self-employing 
workers, on the other hand, usually have property interests that 
make them averse to social changes ; and they have something 
that they probably value still more, . . . that is, their power of 
self-direction. ... A man who has been his own boss . . . 
resents the restraint of official supervision. This sentiment 
is widely diffused among the more prosperous working people 
of Australasia. The experience of democracy, in Australasia 
as well as America, goes to show that the personal interest 
of a public captain of industry would lie in conciliating his 
employees, at the expense if necessary of the whole body of 
citizens. . . . As a natural consequence of this, the investigating 
commissions of Parliament have found that public are more 
expensive than corresponding private undertakings, and that 
men do not work as well for the state as for private employers. 



§ 413 '^l Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 461 

Nothing illustrates the last fact more significantly than that the 
usual term among Australasians for an easy-going pace of 
working is 'the government stroke'." 

.^2 r II ^. Among Mr. Reeves's arguments* for en- 

' larging the functions of the state is : " Mis- 
takes may be made, but we can restrain the state. 
Trusts and combines we might not be able to control." 
It would be interesting to poll the citizens of New York, 
Philadelphia and Chicago, and a good many other places, 
on this question. But as to the state, it is the incon- 
testable fact that it is possible in a single day (tho 
only after a hard-fought campaign) to "turn the rascals 
out". But it is equally incontestable that they have 
always got back again. One is tempted to believe 
that in a given state of human nature, one method, in 
the long run, does about as well as another, and that 
the only advance that can be made permanent is in 
human nature itself. But this skepticism regarding 
m^ethods should be guarded against. Because of some 
defect of detail, the best methods often fail when first 
tried; but something is learned at each attempt, even 
be it no more than what to avoid in future. 

Another equally striking and equally questionable 
remark of Mr. Reeves is that " newspapers criticise the 
public service in a way which they will not or dare not 
criticise private enterprise. State management, there- 
fore, carries with it the great guarantee of publicity." 
With this statement, compare the notorious difficulty of 
getting correct accounts of state enterprises, from Aus- 
tralia or anywhere else. 

413. The latest Notwithstanding that the American ex- 

American experi- perience of government operation is com- 
^"^^' paratively trifling, it has already been 

abandoned in several cases in addition to those already 
.,„ , , ,, , given. In 1905, the city of Omaha for the 

413 (a). Omaha. 9- . ,■ ■ ■ V "^ i . -. -r^ 

nrst time m sixteen years, elected a Demo- 
cratic administration, because the Democrats promised 

* Op. cit. 



462 The Promotion of Convenience. [§413 a 

municipal operation. A special letter to the New York 
Times thus related the experience: _ j 

" The Democrats promised municipal ownership of just 
about all the public utilities, even down to advocating that the 
city own the railroad switch-tracks in the wholesale districts 
and rent these tracks to the different railroads. . . . Omaha 
went wild over the idea. . . . After the election the cost . . . 
began to be counted. The Board of Engineers ... made a re- 
port that just doubled the price the city was willing to pay for 
the water system, and the water company went into court to 
compel the city to pay. . . . When the taxpayers saw that 
they would be compelled to pay more than $6,000,000 for prop- 
erty which they had expected to get for $3,000,000 there was 
a howl from them. 

" Immediately afterward it was found that the fund on which 
the municipal asphalt plant was expected to keep running all 
the summer was exhausted in July. . . . Then the city market- 
house scandal opened up afresh. This was the first effort of 
Omaha to go into municipal-ownership business. . . . 

"A big house was erected on one of the principal streets at a 
cost of $12,000, altho almost any contractor in the city would 
duplicate the building for $5,000. Then the Council made 
stringent laws forcing the commission men to move into the 
market-house. Two of them did so. . . . The others ignored 
the order. After a month or so the two . . . moved out and 
the doors were closed. 

"And so, between the market -house scandal, the asphalt 
works, the three-million-dollar overcharge in the waterworks 
plant, and the failure of the City Council to take any steps to 
rescue the city from the muddle it has gotten into, taxpayers 
are afraid of indulging any further in municipal-ownership ideas." 

So far as American experience goes, the last important 
testimony was gathered and discussed at the meeting 
of the Political Science Association in Baltimore, Decem- 
ber 26 to 29, 1895.* The discussion was of "The Case 
for Municipal Ownership", but Operation was certainly 
meant, as there had not then developed any serious 
opinion against Ownership. The proponent of "the 
case for" announced its triumphant success in America, 
413 (b), A weak but citcd in evidence only the electric-light- 
showing. ij^g plants of Detroit, Chicago and Alle- 

gheny; sundry markets and docks which require vir- 

* These reports, made as listener, I have checked from the 
"Proceedings". 



§ 413 ^] I-^cLi^st Aspects of Government Operation. 463 

tuaily no ''operation", and where, in the nature of the 
case, private operation is virtually unknown; the Cin- 
cinnati Southern Railway, which is not municipally 
operated at all, but leased to a private corporation; 
and the water-plants of some half-dozen cities where 
water runs down hill under municipal supervision (some 
of them., cities like New York and Boston, being cases 
where water has been acting that w^ay, undisturbed by 
these new questions of municipal operation, for over 
fifty years) . The failures and wastes were not embraced 
in his schedule. 

Then he proceeded to show, very cor- 
m(c). The strong fectly, that the strong men of the cities 

man will control •' ^ J^ 

under any system, now control them tlirough the public- 
service corporations; and to prove con- 
clusively that if there were no public-service corpora- 
tions, the strong men would not control the cities 
through them. He omitted, however, to prove that 
if the strong men did not control in that way, they 
would not control at all. So far as experience has been 
accumulated, the}^ always have controlled ; and so far as 
the future can be judged from the past, they always 
will control, until there shall be so much advance in 
the strength of weaker men that all men will be strong, 
and democracy will be a fact as well as a name. At 
present, however, the weaker men are not paying much 
attention to developing their strength, but are absorbed 
in schemes for massing what strength they have, to get 
more conveniences at the expense of those who are 
already stronger. 

The same speaker at the Baltimore 
fndiliuhegef^'^ meeting brought up as an argument for 
municipal operation, the demonstrated 
and established argument against it — that "monopoly 
is always indolent". Apparently he failed to realize 
that there can be no other monopoly as nearly im- 
pregnable as a government monopoly. He claimed that 
the destruction of private operation would be the de- 
struction of privilege. Apparently he had never heard 
of Tammany Hall or the privileges enjoyed by Tweed 



464 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 413^' 

and Croker and their fellows, even with municipal 
operation of all the franchises far beyond their 
grasp . 

He made a number of other claims which, like the 
claims generally made for extension of government 
functions, rest on about equally strong foundations 
with those cited. He even supported his contentions 
by the statement that "transit, light and water . . . 
next to rent . . . are the heaviest item in the domestic 
budget". 

When the "Case for Municipal Ownership" (Opera- 
tion was meant all the time) is thus put before the 
representative Political Science Association of America, 
farther discussion hardly seems called for. 

In answering the proponent so fully cited, Professor 
Daniels said that the statistics so far gathered — in the 
report of the American Commissioner of Labor (1899) 
and in the Census Bulletins for 1890 — do not "settle 
even remotely the disputed question"; that govern- 
ments do not pay salaries to attract the best talent 
away from private corporations; and that he thinks 
that the solution of the whole topic lies in reforming 
politics before giving over franchises to political opera- 
tion; and in the meantime, having the ownership of 
them retained by the cities, and the operation leased to 
private enterprise, for either fixed sums or percentages 
of receipts or profits. 

413 (e). Our pri- Profcssor Rowc Called attention to the 
lftte'"than"^ Surprise foreigners feel at the enterprise, 
Europe's. initiative and liberality for improved 

methods, of our public-service corporations; which indi- 
cates that those of Europe leave more room to desire 
government operation than ours do. 

Several other speakers followed with a quite general 
agreement that municipal officers are tempted to make 
dangerously favorable showings for municipal operations , 
by allowing too little for repair and renewal ; that Euro- 
pean experience is immature and uncertain, American 
experience vastly more so, and European conditions too 
different from American to afford any guidance. 



§ 4^3 f] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 465 

413 (f). Democracy The proponent for Municipal Operation 
on trial. ^:^^ make one statement in various forms, 

which is incontrovertible, and which justifies a little 
emphasis. He said: "The question is not so much, 
Do we believe in municipal ownership?" (Operation.) 
"The question is: Do we believe in democracy?" 
That is it exactly, and well, stated. It would be better 
stated, however, as: Do we believe in democracy to the 
extent of municipal operation? To that question, prob- 
ably the answer of the sanest students would generally 
be something like: So far as helping water run down 
hill, we do. So far as streets and sewers, we believe in 
democracy's ability to make, repair and clean them — 
very badly; but for abundant reasons, democracy may 
be the best available agency. So far as transit, light 
and the other franchises, the case is yet to be proven: 
where government has done them best, democracy is 
unknown (426,426 c); but even there, testimony, and 
even experience, conflict a good deal, while in America, 
the only country but France where democracy plays any 
part in municipal affairs, there is virtually no experience 
at all. 

The proponent for Municipal Ownership also said 
that it "is the struggle of democracy seeking to divorce 
itself from a privileged class". It is that, and more. 
As long as the differences in men are as great as now, 
the few will inevitably enjoy privileges that the many 
cannot know; the many are constantly striving for a 
larger share of what the few produce, not to speak of 
what some of the few filch from all. Yet beyond a 
moderate degree, it does the weak no good to get the 
things the strong have made: for they cannot handle 
them. To determine where that moderate degree is, 
regarding municipal franchises, is now matter of 
experiment. But municipal operation has not its rela- 
tively largest following among those who intelligently 
believe that, in even a moderate degree, it will be an 
economy, or who care anything about economy. Much 
its largest relative following is among those who merely 
look forward to ultimately getting transit, light, heat 



466 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 413/ 

and all other good things without paying for them; 
not among those who expect municipal operation to 
reduce their taxes, but among those who pay no taxes 

at all. 

413 ; som° ^^ ^^^ same session of the Political 

interesting ex- Scicnce Associatiou, a distinguished mem- 
penences. ^^^ living in a Western university town 

said to a member living in an Eastern university town : 
"I'm not prepared to advocate municipal operation 
everywhere, but it's just the thing for us where I live: 
for the university runs the town." 

"Yes", answered his friend, "just the thing — as 
long as the university runs the town. I thought so a 
few years ago regarding my town, but the university 
doesn't run the town any more: Labor has been assert- 
ing itself." 

"Oh, well, we have no labor troubles." 

"You will have, if you have any labor. We too had 
*no labor troubles'. But the agitators heard of our 
deplorable condition, and sent the 'organizer ' to remedy 
it. Since then our little town has had proportionally 
as many strikes and as much idleness and suspended 
work, as the proudest cities. But the unions have not 
been content with this. They wanted to go into politics : 
they want to rule everything now, you know, and 
think they can do it. Well, cheap light and free 
whiskey gave them a rallying-cry. They made a black- 
smith mayor. He began building an electric-light 
plant without the assistance of the professor of elec- 
tricity, and turned the professor of engineering off the 
board of public works, and the professors of the medical 
school off the board of health; and put in his friends 
from the ranks of * Labor '. So you see the university no 
longer runs the town. Within five years, your university 
won't run your town. I '11 take your opinion of municipal 
operation then." 

Since the foregoing conversation, some other facts 
worth noting have taken place in the Eastern university 
town. Building, which was expected to be very lively 



§413^'] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 467 

in the following spring, was very dull. Some say the 
unions had forced wages too high. Some say that 
capitalists hesitate to invest as freely in a town run 
by its present authorities, as they did in a town "run 
by the university ", 

In searching the mass of literature on the subject, 
one finds two characteristics pervading the arguments 
in favor of municipal operation, and a statement of those 
characteristics seems to sum up the situation. One 
413 (h), Fallacious is that the evils of the established system 
reasoning. ^^^ enumerated, and the claim made re- 

garding each, that the proposed system would cure it. 
The other is that ideal conditions are enumerated, 
and the claim made that the proposed system would 
effect them. Both claims are virtually gratuitous. 
There is not enough experience to support either. 

One argument advanced by Professor Zueblin, leads 
to a point that calls for expansion. Because govern- 
ments have been very ineffective in inspecting and con- 
trolling the operation of municipal utilities by private 
interests, he advises that they should undertake the en- 
tire management. How the honesty and capacity for 
entire management are to be found in organizations 
that cannot muster enough of those qualities for effect- 
ive criticism and regulation, he does not state. But 
as he does state his ideal, it may be well to state a more 
modest, and therefore more nearly realizable, one 
already hinted at. It is already the fashion, when 
413 (i), Desimbii- ^b^ses bccome unbearable, to appoint 
ity of 'publicity morc or less special commissions, such 

and commissions, j.itxj_j_/^ r\ • • 

as the Interstate Commerce Commission, 
the Standard Oil and the Beef and Insurance Com- 
missions to look into them and suggest remedies. 
Even in their spasmodic, lax and inchoate and rudi- 
mentary manifestations, all the commissions have 
been more or less useful, some of them very useful. 
But permanent commissions regarding permanent mat- 
ters, like the various state railroad commissions, are 



468 The Promotion of Convenience. [§413^' 

also desirable, tho too apt to lapse into innocuous desue- 
tude. Yet the mere publicity their examinations have 
given to abuses, does a very great deal toward rem- 
edying them. Is it not reasonable, then, to expect and 
strive that these spasmodic agencies shall be greatly 
improved, and that from them shall be evolved perma- 
nent commissions for the constant and more skilled 
and more effective inspection and control of all public 
utilities — not only those, like the railroads, tramways 
and street pipes, that are, in the nature of things, 
monopolies; but also those, like the oil and beef in- 
dustries, that under business combination have virtu- 
ally grown to be monopolies? 

This certainly seems the next stage in 
oiiesthe ideal' improvement, and a stage that may be on 
Sen%mcthabL ^^^^ ^^J toward government operation of 
the franchises naturally monopolistig, and 
effective exaction of justice from businesses only arti- 
ficially monopolistic. It is not impossible that justice 
can be exacted only by methods which shall keep all 
non-government business, like oil, coal and beef, open 
to competition. But there is probably more reason to 
hope for success regarding private enterprises, from 
the wider diffusion among men of ability to compete — 
from the rise of more men of organizing capacity, than 
from government regulation. There is room for both 
influences, and no reason why they should not work 
together. A third agency should not be lost sight of 
— many men who are not often run away with b}^ their 
imaginations believe that there is a rapid increase in 
knowledge of civic affairs and sense of public responsi- 
bility, and hope much from them. 

414. Summary and O^ the whole, then, the drift of experi- 
conclusions. ence regarding municipalization seems to 

be that in all matters which involve tearing up the 
streets, honest municipalization would probably be 
much better than private control, even if the control 
were competitive: but also, alas, that honest munici- 
palization is generally so far out of sight in America, 



§ 414 ^] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 469 

that probably present evils are much less than such mu- 
nicipalization as we could get in most places at present. 

Lecky declared that "the New York Commission of 
1876 [the Commission appointed by Governor Tilden in 
1875] probably understated the case when they declared 
that more than half of all the present city debts in the 
United States are the direct results of intentional and 
corrupt misrule". There is nothing like this in Eng- 
land; and yet, despite much difference of opinion, the 
leading authorities there do not wish farther to trust 
their municipalities with the conduct of such utilities 
as can be cared for by private enterprise. 

Leaving out such matters as gas, electricity and the 
telephone, which are not quite natural monopolies, 
whether it would be wiser for the government to take 
all the natural monopolies under its own charge, depends, 
as already said, on the degree of civilization. Probably 
early in '99 most students would have said that Great 
Britain and Germany had already attained the degree 
of civilization necessary; but the verdict w;ould probably 
be different now. In England "municipal trading" has 
more than doubled municipal indebtedness, 
taxation imreased and nearly doublcd municipal taxation, 
tiomu results' while population has only increased about 
a quarter, and the municipalities have 
nothing to show for the debts, in proportion to their 
amounts, especially as plant had generally been suffered 
to become antiquated, instead of being kept up to the 
mark, as it must be kept under private competition. 

Moreover, it is claimed, the people are not getting, 
in return for their increased taxation, conveniences at 
all in proportion to the increase, especially as people are 
paying for most of the conveniences as used, tho un- 
doubtedly, in many cases, at lower apparent rates than 
those charged by the private companies, the rest being 
generally made up by taxation. 

The effects of municipal obstruction and supineness 
on opportunities for capital and labor, have been made 
too plain to occupy us farther ; but what must they be on 



47© The Promotion of Convenience. [§4146 

414 (b). English inventive talent ? That is perhaps the most 
municipalization serioiis question in the whole situation. The 

obstructive, espe- . -^, . ^ . i • . 

daily to inventive case IS plain enough m such instances as 
*"'^"^' those just cited ; but there is a general con- 

viction that governmental bodies can never be expected 
to be on the lookout for new inventions or opportunities 
with the keenness forced by private competition. Presi- 
dent Hadley says that : ' ' Tho half the railroads and nine 
tenths of the telegraphs of the world are in government 
hands, all the large improvements of method in these 
lines have been made under private enterprise." As 
natural monopolies cannot have the benefit of compe- 
tition, if they are left to municipal development, double 
care is needed to see that they are developed; but first 
that they are not forced to municipal development until 
experience and politics are more advanced than a 
good many enlightened people believe they generally 
are yet, even in England. 

As to the general character of municipal 
frlmJnt'stmke/''' l^bor, bcforc Coloucl Waring came, and 
since Colonel Waring died, we have most 
of us noticed ' ' the man with the hoe ' ' cleaning streets 
under ordinary American administration, and we know 
the contrast between him and the laborer who is keenly 
watched in private competition. This is especially 
noticeable when New York's snow and ice is being 
cleaned away. So, also, are noticeable the crowds of 
laborers at work on trifling bits of snow and ice that 
might as well be left for the sun. Even in Australasia, 
the standard expression for slow and pottering labor is 
"the government stroke." 

One safeguard worth considering against the dangers 
of municipalization, has been pretty obvious in the 
course of our discussion. So far as private enterprise 
is left free to come in when government work is shabbily 
done, the possibility of its coming might have some 
effect in holding government work up to the mark. 
But we have seen that one of the marked effects of 
municipalization in England is to shut out private enter- 



§ 414 <^] Latest Aspects of Government Operation. 471 

prise, even from wider areas than municipalization cov- 
ers. On the other hand, government work, even when the 
threat of private competition is desirable as a corrective 
of it, may often be desirable as a guard against monopo- 
lies — monopolies that even votes cannot reach, a.nd that 
can defend themselves from the stimulus and restraint of 
competition. Private enterprise and municipal enterprise, 
like all human enterprise, have both their merits and 
their dangers. The dividing line seems to be that of 

natural monopoty. Where the benefit of 
ization desi^abiT ' cornpetition cauuot be had, it is mainly a 
agaii^st monopoly, question of the purity of politics w^hether 

the government would better take hold; 
but where private competition can be expected to give 
the people the usual benefit of keen enterprise and low 
prices, government should be kept out. It is doubtful 
if any large community among us is yet civilized enough 
to municipalize much wisely, tho from one point of 
view we are cz^cr-civilized for it: our suffrage is too 
advanced (426-426 c). 

Municipalities do not manage such affairs as well as 
private corporations, because the officers of private 
corporations are elected only by those who have money 
directly at stake; while the officers of cities are largely 
elected by people who pay no taxes and have no money. 

It is probably too late to ask why people are per- 
mitted to vote in matters where they do not have 
to stand the consequences. But they are permitted, 
and revolutions do not often go backwards. The only 
remedy that now seems practicable is to help such people 
get ahead so that they too will have something at stake. 

-,.,,,- . . ,. We touched one argument for munici- 
zation as training palizatiou whcn wc saiQ that everybody 
in citizenship. ^ould complaiu of poor water and poor 
postal service : some people think that if people were de- 
pendent on government for more of their conveniences, 
they would take more interest in government and 
reform it. The idea is not impossible, but it is so very 



472 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 414^ 

uncertain, that it will not do to trust much to it before 
knowing more about it. It is indeed an argument for 
going into municipalization, but going slow. It should 
be tried tentatively: for if carried to an extreme, it is 
simply like the older panaceas which, when analyzed, 
are merely disguised schemes for robbing the rich to 
help the poor, and are generally accompanied by the 
belief that if the plan were carried out to its widest ex- 
treme, some improvement in the lot of the poor would 
result — a belief that is generally an utter fallacy. 

The argument that public utilities conducted at tax- 
payers' risk would lead the taxpayer to greater attention 
to his public duties, can appeal, in New York City for 
instance, to only one voter in ten: for only that pro- 
portion are taxpayers. The argument would of course 
carry more weight in communities where the proportion 
of taxpayers is larger. 

The situation is a good deal like that of the mother 
who did not want her boy to go into the water before 
he knew how to swim : if she meant that he should not 
go in all the way — that he should wade, and not plunge 
where it was over his head, she was a very sensible 
woman. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

PECULIAR AMERICAN MUNICIPAL DIFFICULTIES. 

415. American American mtinicipal operation is exposed 
municipal corruption, to peculiar dangers. The government of 
many American cities has long been among the most 
corrupt — quite probably the most corrupt, in the civilized 
world; and since the civil war, the general government 
of the United States has been in danger of falling into 
the same condition. Let us consider a bit of history 
which may make it easier to understand our peculiar 
conditions. 

416. New York ^'^ New York shortly before the year 
'"1270' 1870, an enormous amount had been 
done in the way of public improvements. It was then 
found that for a long time nearly everything bought for 
city use, and nearly all work done on the streets, parks, 
aqueducts and public buildings, had been charged to 
the taxpayers at many times its cost, and the difference 
stolen by the chief officials. From what portion of 
the taxes was actually paid to workmen, they had 
been made to pay back a part to the men who employed 
them, as a condition of getting and keeping their places. 
In the same way, the persons receiving these contribu- 
tions, had to pay the officials just above them, and so 
on up to the highest officials of all. The money so paid 
came out of the taxpayers, because the work was really 
done for only what the workmen were able actually to 
keep for themselves. The rest could have been saved 
if it had not gone into the pockets of the politicians. 
When the state of affairs was discovered, the govern- 

473 



476 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 420 

care for their streets, water, sewerage, health, poHce 
and petty courts, they selected these officers, not with 
reference to the work they were to do, but nominally, 
at least, with reference to their opinions on the tariff 
and on silver. Soon after the Spanish war, local 
officers began to be selected with reference to "im- 
perialism". 

The same things account for this ridiculous state of 
affairs, that account for most ridiculous states of affairs 
in politics — first, of course, ignorance and venality; 
then some defects in organization; and mainly, as is 
so often the case, an outgrown situation kept alive by 
interests that have become established under it. When 
our national government began, its tender and pre- 
carious life was the one absorbing object of public 
interest. Cities were small, and many of the things 
now attended to by their governments, unknown. The 
one object of political faith was national party, and fidel- 
ity to it was put on a par with honor and religion. This 
spirit is not dead yet, especially among the stupid and 
ignorant majority, and it is kept alive there by the party 
managers who find their profit in it. 

Moreover, the Fathers gave us a special legacy in the 
Constitution itself, which helps bring the national parties 
into local politics. The election of United States senators 
by the legislatures, forces the national 
caused^'by method parties to Struggle for possession of each 
of electing U.S. state legislature; and therefore, as long as 

Senators, ^ . ' . ' . ^ ^ 

state and city functions are so mixed that 
the legislature takes a considerable part in city affairs, 
so long must the national parties be interested in city 
matters. 

Once the national parties are in state politics, every 
question of local policy naturally gets under the wing 
of one national party or the other. For instance, a 
liquor law or a Sunday-closing law has got to be carried 
out by the local police and magistrates; or an idea in 
education — such as Bible-reading in the schools, or the 
prevention of truancy, has got to be carried out by the 



§ 42 o 6] Peculiar American Municipal Difficulties. 477 

local school superintendents. So the party taking up 
an}^ one of these measures must not only control the 
state legislature, to get its law enacted; but to get it 
enforced, must control the local magistrates and police, 
or superintendents of education. Therefore so far as 
these officers are appointed by mayors or village presi- 
dents, and confirmed by city councils or village boards, 
so far must the parties advocating the measures, 
struggle for the election of those local functionaries. 
If all those minor local officers were state officers, and 
mayors and city councils had nothing to do with them, 
the parties advocating measures which the officers must 
administer, would still struggle to get the officers. 

But if they were state officers, either they would be 
appointed by the governor : so the state parties need not 
run any candidate but the governor; while the mayors 
and city councils, etc., would run on purely local 
questions; or if such state officers were not appointed 
by the governor, they would appear only in state elections , 
and not in the local elections, which it is a growing 
custom to hold distinct from the state elections : hence 
they would no longer tempt the national parties into 
nominating and working in the local elections. 

But as long as the local spoils are so rich, they will 
be temptation enough for the national parties, even if 
the other temptations were removed. But certainly 
the more we reduce temptations, the more we reduce 
the time that it will take to evolve wisdom and honesty 
superior to them. 

When our national party managers have the imper- 
tinence to make hack nominations for local offices, 
sensible people sometimes make nominations of their 
own. But then the party bosses generally unite to 
defeat the non-party candidate. In the old days of 
party election-booths, once when there was a non- 
partisan ticket in the field, I myself saw Republican 
ballots dealt out from Democratic booths. 
420 (b). Corrupts '^^^^ Subordinating of local questions 
both national and to statc and national questions, has never 

local politics. ■, r-i -i • a. ix- i j_- 

benented state and national questions. 



476 . The Promotion oj Convenience. [§ 420 

care for their streets, water, sewerage, health, police 
and petty courts, they selected these officers, not with 
reference to the work they were to do, but nominally, 
at least, with reference to their opinions on the tariff 
and on silver. Soon after the Spanish war, local 
officers began to be selected with reference to "im- 
perialism". 

The same things account for this ridiculous state of 
affairs, tha.t account for most ridiculous states of affairs 
in politics — first, of course, ignorance and venality; 
then some defects in organization; and mainly, as is 
so often the case, an outgrown situation kept alive by 
interests that have become established under it. When 
our national government began, its tender and pre- 
carious life was the one absorbing object of public 
interest. Cities were small, and many of the things 
now attended to by their governments, unknown. The 
one object of political faith was national party, and fidel- 
ity to it was put on a par with honor and religion. This 
spirit is not dead yet, especially among the stupid and 
ignorant majority, and it is kept alive there by the party 
managers who find their profit in it. 

Moreover, the Fathers gave us a special legacy in the 
Constitution itself, which helps bring the national parties 
into local politics. The election of United States senators 
by the legislatures, forces the national 
caused^'by method parties to Struggle for possession of each 
sinatol's"^ ^'^' state legislature; and therefore, as long as 
state and city functions are so mixed that 
the legislature takes a considerable part in city affairs, 
so long must the national parties be interested in city 
matters. 

Once the national parties are in state politics, every 
question of local policy naturally gets under the wing 
of one national party or the other. For instance, a 
liquor law or a Sunday-closing law has got to be carried 
out by the local police and magistrates; or an idea in 
education — such as Bible-reading in the schools, or the 
prevention of truancy, has got to be carried out by the 



§ 42 o 6] Peculiar American Municipal Difficulties. 477 

local school superintendents. So the party taking up 
an}^ one of these measures must not only control the 
state legislature, to get its law enacted; but to get it 
enforced, must control the local magistrates and police, 
or superintendents of education. Therefore so far as 
these officers are appointed by mayors or village presi- 
dents, and confirmed by city councils or village boards, 
so far must the parties advocating the measures, 
struggle for the election of those local functionaries. 
If all those minor local officers were state officers, and 
mayors and city councils had nothing to do with them, 
the parties advocating measures which the officers must 
administer, would still struggle to get the officers. 

But if they were state officers, either they would be 
appointed by the governor : so the state parties need not 
run any candidate but the governor; while the mayors 
and city councils, etc., would run on purely local 
questions; or if such state officers were not appointed 
by the governor, they would appear only in state elections , 
and not in the local elections, which it is a growing 
custom to hold distinct from the state elections: hence 
they would no longer tempt the national parties into 
nominating and working in the local elections. 

But as long as the local spoils are so rich, they will 
be temptation enough for the national parties, even if 
the other temptations were removed. But certainly 
the more we reduce temptations, the more we reduce 
the time that it will take to evolve wisdom and honesty 
superior to them. 

When our national party managers have the imper- 
tinence to make hack nominations for local offices, 
sensible people sometimes make nominations of their 
own. But then the party bosses generally unite to 
defeat the non-party candidate. In the old days of 
party election-booths, once when there was a non- 
partisan ticket in the field, I myself saw Republican 
ballots dealt out from Democratic booths. 
420 (b). Corrupts "^^^^ subordinating of local questions 
both national and to State and national questions, has never 
oca po tics. benefited state and national questions. 



478 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 4206 

On the contrary, the mixing of local and state politics 
with national politics, has led the corrupt politicians, 
for the sake of local spoils, to just so much stronger 
efforts to control the national parties. The practice 
works harm in both directions. 

All the great reform victories in the cities have been 
won by wise people voting together in local matters, 
without any regard lor their national politics. 

420 re;. Paradoxes It is interesting and variously sugges- 
of Democracy, ^{yq that of the three principal schemes 
wherein the founders of our democratic national gov- 
ernment dared not trust to democracy — the election 
of president, the election of senators, and the appoint- 
ment of the Supreme Court, one is a dead letter, one 
a live evil, and only one a success ; and in that one — the 
appointment of the Supreme Court, the suffrage acts so 
remotely that the voters and even the politicians hardly 
take the matter into consideration at all. 

But after all, must we wait to abolish the interference 
of national parties in local elections, till every voter is 
intelligent and honest enough to vote independently in 
local matters, or until we can amend the Constitution 
of the United States, or devise other machinery to vir- 
tually elect senators by popular vote? Or can we do 
something toward divorcing local from national politics 
short, of amending the Constitution or some parallel 
device ? 

c '1 s • Professor Goodnow * suggests that the 

Reform as a temptation to interfere would be dimin- 

remedv. ished by lessening party control over 

municipal offices, through increasing the proportion of 
offices filled only by appointment, and also those that 
can be filled only upon examination, and whose tenure 
is permanent during good behavior. Long tenure of 
office is nearly universal in the cities of Europe, especially 
in the working staff. A German burgomaster is a pro- 

* "Municipal Problems." 



§ 422] Peculiar American Municipal Diffictdties. 479 

fessional expert who generally holds his place for life, 
except where one in a smaller city makes a reputation 
that leads to his being called to a greater city. 

Professor Goodnow also su^s^ests some- 
Sons' to the state, thing perhaps more easily effected, — sepa- 

locai functions to rating State functions and city functions, 
the locality j~ ° -1 1 • i ^ -, • 

as tar as possible, just as already m some 

states, state and city elections are separated. This 
would lessen the number of matters — such as street 
railways and gas and water companies, which the 
state legislature can control; and on the other hand, 
would take away from local administration and give 
directly to state administration, more matters of purely 
state policy, such as the care of the defective classes, 
including education, the liquor traffic, the administra- 
tion of justice, and the preservation of the peace. On 
one side, the state could attend entirely to those things 
which it would naturally attend to if there were no 
such thing as a city. On the other side, the city 
could attend entirely to those things which exist soleh^ 
because the city exists. If the state were entirely 
rural, and there were no local governments, the state 
government would care entirely, as it now does partly, 
for the preservation of order, the adm^inistration of 
justice, and the care of the defective classes, including 
the education of the immature. When a city grows 
up, it brings the new needs of elaborate laying-out and 
paving and lighting of streets; of railways on, over or 
under them; of water-supply and sewerage; of regu- 
lation of buildings; et cetera. Let state and city 
each care for its own. City children have to be edu- 
cated, and city poor and insane cared for, as do country 
ones, but it is properly a state function. So do city 
quarrels have to be adjusted in court, and city criminals 
restrained and punished, just as country ones do, but 
these too are properly state functions. 

An additional reason for the state keeping control 
of all functions not necessarily a part of the evolution 
of a city, is that corruption grows in city governments 
faster than in state governments (417), especially in 



480 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 422 

things that do not, Hke streets, water, etc., come under 
every citizen's notice. 

But that division is not quite as clear as 
422 r«. ucaion..^^ seems. There is hardly sufficient his- 
torical warrant to call education, for instance, a state 
function — in America at least, tho there is in Prussia 
and France, and (tho only comparatively recently) in 
England. But in America, local provision for schools 
was well under way before the localities were consoli- 
dated into states, and education has been mainly a 
local matter ever since, with more or less supervision 
and assistance from the state. Perhaps the state rela- *» 
tion to it is growing, at least in the development of 
state universities by the newer states; and there are 
state superintendents in several states: even in so old 
a state as New York, there is a state officer called 
the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with very 
large supervisory and advisory powers regarding the 
local schools, and there is a strong tendency to enlarge 
his powers. Toward the close of the last century, con- 
siderable agitation of the subject was going on in New 
York, because of the usual corruption of city govern- 
ment invading the school boards : so although America 
began with local public education, state public educa- 
tion may, after all, be the logical thing; and if it is, 
of course, evolution tends toward it. 

Police, again, like education, have held 
a double position. In France and Ger- 
many a state police is a matter of course; and even 
in England, despite the tradition that strong local 
government is the very basis of Anglo-Saxon liberty, 
the police were made a national body by Sir Robert 
Peel (hence the name "peelers") with great improve- 
ment in the maintenance of order ; and half the expense 
of them is contributed by the nation. Massachusetts 
has had satisfactory experience in the same direction, 
and the corruptions in the cities of New York state, as 
well as the fact that maintenance of order is logically 
an ancient function of the state — of the chief law-making 



§ 423] Peculiar American Municipal Difficulties. 481 

power, have led many thinkers to advocate a state 
pohce there. 

The administration ' of justice, as well as the main- 
tenance of order, is a state function already, but in 
cities, generally only so far as concerns the upper 
courts. Many cities have courts for small cases — 
inside of a thousand or two dollars, which are not part 
of the state judicial organization. Most judges, even 
of state courts, are elected in localities, and the police 
magistrates in the cities are generally appointed by the 
mayors. It would probably be an improvement to 
make them all state officers. It might be difficult for 
New York City, for instance, to have its affairs so largely 
administered by people sent from Albany; or Chicago, 
by people from Springfield; but the men need not be 
sent from the state capitals, any more than the officers 
of the post and revenue and United States courts are 
sent from Washington. Their being state officers is 
merely a question of how they are put into office, and 
to what heads they are responsible: not of where they 
lived before taking office. 

American local governments are more 
fn^?onfu'jrn''g io?il"® Corrupted by national politics than those 
ajjj^.fjjtional of other advanced nations. In England, 

local nominations by the national parties, 
instead of being the rule, are the rare exception, tho 
unfortunately there are signs of their increase, largely 
depending . upon the fact that Parliament takes the 
place of our state legislatures in determining what 
"municipal trading" a city can undertake. Yet so far, 
not half the municipal offices are even contested, and 
probably half the elections are reelections for good 
service. Here the parties contest every election, and 
generally give an inexperienced man his "turn". In 
most of the cities of the continent of Europe, the sys- 
tem itself hardly admits of such a thing: for a con- 
siderable part of the municipal legislature is elected by 
special members of the community, eminent for know!- 



482 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 423 

edge or ability, who would not think of national politics 
in the connection (426 6).* 

Aside from the method of electing sen- 
catf wS anT"" ators, there are other peculiar causes of po- 

good nature pro- Htical corruption in American history and 
mote carelessness. -, , r\ -i j. 

character. Our early government was 

founded by an exceptional set of people, among whom a 
working democracy was not inconceivable. Thus, tho 
they were far from beginning with a system of universal 
suffrage, that system gradually grew up ; but the increase 
in our ignorant classes has made it a very different thing 
from what the fathers expected. Moreover, the United 
States, being a comparatively new and thinly populated 
country, has such vast masses of untouched wealth in 
its mines, such vast tracts of cheap forest and arable 
land, and such immense opportunities to trade in the 
products of all these, that the people are all engrossed 
in making money, and give less heed than Europeans 
must, to saving it. Tweed said that nobody in New 
York would stop to protect a dollar from the politicians, 
as long as he was left another dollar to trade with. His 
remark was something like the truth. Not only in 
New York, but throughout the country generally, it is 
the disposition of the people to neglect their govern- 
ments and let them fall into the hands of corrupt men, 
and to carry their differences on national questions 
into home politics, until the taxations and oppressions 
become too heavy to be borne ; then the people arouse 
themselves and- make a change, and then gradually 
relapse into the bad ways again. 

But with all the carelessness of American cities, 
their debts are not always larger than those of European 
cities. But the European cities have something to 
show for their debts that ours have not — city ownership 
of street railways, docks, gasworks, markets, abattoirs, 
improved tenements, lodging-houses, baths, assembly- 

* On these points and on the composition of European 
municipal governing bodies, Shaw is invaluable. 



§ 425] Peculiar American A^unicipal Difficulties. 483 

rooms and other things — many of them, even the ceme- 
teries, sources of income. Our debts to a large extent 
represent merely the stealings of our politicians. 

One other national characteristic that keeps our 
municipal administration poor, is Our proverbial good 
nature. We do not "kick" enough. So wise a man 
as Herbert Spencer blamed us for this. Perhaps we 
are so sure of our more important rights, that we are 
careless about mere conveniences. If we would make 
it a duty to complain of cars not stopping, or being 
overcrowded, and of sanitary violations, etc., we would 
make a vast improvement. A poor fellow in a tenement- 
house might get himself into trouble if he complained 
of his landlord, but in Paris for instance, the health 
authorities invite all people to mail them unsigned 
complaints. 

Even if our capable people were less careless of 
their political duties, there may not be enough such 
people to make much direct difference, but they could 
effect considerable through watchfulness and influence, 
tho perhaps not through votes: for the ignorant are 
more and more crowding into the cities, 
425. Corruption of especially seaport cities ; and in New York 

voters under the j 1 u. n^ • • 1 j_ ^ 

guise of charity. at least, iammany is organized to corrupt 
them by charity, on the old plan of "bread 
and circuses" that helped destroy Rome. It has an 
agent in every district where the poor crowd, whose 
function it is to befriend them in all possible ways. 

That may be a good use to make of the spoils, but 
only a small portion of them go that way. It is simply 
a plan to use up a little in order to get more. The 
reform element really spends vastly more money for 
the benefit of the poor, than the political organizations 
do — all the vast charities of the cities are supported 
by people who generally vote against the corrupt 
machines. But that fact is not felt by the poor man: 
the charity of the political machine comes to him in 
the name of the machine, and what is of perhaps even 



484 The Promotion of Convenience. [§425 

more consequence, it comes through a jolly sympa- 
thetic neighbor of his own class, who knows him person- 
ally and drops in at his home. The great charitable 
institutions naturally render their services in a more 
or less routine way, through strangers, and from offices 
more or less remote. 

The people who actually support the real charities, 
might use a part of their funds as Tammany uses a part 
of its funds. But they do not do it, partly because 
they are too busy making more funds, but mainly 
because, after all, it is not honest to work politics 
imder the mask of charity. They are, however, in 
manv cities, carrying their benevolence and educating 
influence right home to the poor through the various 
"settlements" started by the universities, and now 
taken up by many other agencies. 

426. Non-taxpay- There can be no reason or justice in 
ers voting permitting people who do not pay taxes to 

vote away the property of those who do. In the Euro- 
pean cities, however wide the suffrage may be in 
national matters, probably not half the men vote for 
city officers. In Great Britain, the Low Countries, 
Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy, such an absurdity 
as universal suffrage for city officers is unknown (except 
in the comparatively rare cases where a non-taxpayer's 
educational qualification prevents his voting being 
absurd) ; and it is in those countries that cities are best 
and most fully developed, and do most for the health 
and happiness of the very people who are not permitted 
to vote. The remarkable showing already quoted for 
Jacksonville, Florida, has been effected only under the 
Australian ballot, which virtually imposes an educa- 
tional qualification. That fact is full of meaning re- 
garding whatever favorable showing may have been 
made in Australia itself. Even in the villages of New 
York state, and in Texas at least, nobody can put a 
locality in debt for public improvements, without a 
vote of the taxpayers. It is the older practice, indeed, 
to have improvements voted only by taxpayers. It 



§426^] Peculiar American Municipal Difficulties. 485 

looks as if the other practice had been worked into 
existence, as cities increased, by the poHticia^ns expect- 
ing to secure the spoils of the cities through the care- 
less votes of those who have nothing at stake. 

But there is a reason, tho not necessarily a good one, 
why the practice of the New York and Texas villages 
cannot be carried into the cities: the taxpayers of 
the towns and villages can easily vote on each appro- 
priation, like officers' salaries and ordinary running 
expenses, that is not a mere matter of routine; but 
it would certainly be much more difficult to have that 
done in the more complex improvement of the cities. 
A very authoritative substitute was proposed in 1875 
-00 , , T-;^ bv a very eminent commission appointed 

426 r«;. Tilden ^^ r^ -^ o^-u £ at ■\t i T-i- 

Commission's pro- by GovcrnoT iilden 01 JNew York, it 
posed remedy. ^-gpo^ted in favor of each city having a 
Board of Finance to be elected by taxpayers alone, 
who should regulate all expenditures. But reasonable 
and ingenious as the measure was, it could not be 
carried. Of course the politicians did not want it: 
it would spoil their trade: so they raised the cry that 
it was against universal suffrage. It was against the 
absurdities of universal suffrage, of course, but not 
against its legitimate claims. Those claims are sim- 
426 (b) Local P^^ ^^^^ every man shall vote for the 
suffrage rights ofhcers who protcct his life, liberty and 
differ from others, i^gi^i^^te pursuit of happiness. Paying 
the officers who attend to conveniences, and deciding 
upon spending money on them, are other matters, which 
can be vastly more safely and reasonably left to those 
who must do the paying, and who therefore have proved 
that they can handle money wisely. If such matters 
were so left, the poorer man would be all the surer of 
good officers to protect the other set of rights which 
are as much his as anybody's. 

This is the plan in the cities which lead 
foc%^%'ffr'a^e^fn the world in administration, convenience 

fiiies"'^^"^''"^'^' ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ P^*^^ — ^^ Great Britain. 

Germany, Austro -Hungary and Italy. 

Even taking the extreme view that a city should be 



486 The Promotion of Convenience. [§426^ 

largely a charitable institution, it is not very sound 
policy to let a charity institution be run by the bene- 
ficiaries.* 

As to France, those who know Paris under universal 
suffrage, and knew it before, say that it has deteriorated. 
In Germany, Prussia lets only taxpayers vote for city 
councillors, and (as is quite generally the case in Europe) 
the councillors elect the executive officers — burgomaster, 
etc. The suffrage arrangement by no means ends with 
letting only taxpayers vote. A graded list of tax- 
payers is made, beginning with the one who pays most. 
Those who pay the first third of the taxes, elect one 
third of the council, and those who pay the second and 
the third thirds of the taxes, respectively elect the other 
two thirds of the council. Taking Berlin's election of 
'93 as an illustration, the three portions of the council 
were elected respectively by 2 per cent., 11 per cent., and 
87 per cent, of the taxpayers. As an indication of the 
faithfulness of these respective classes of taxpayers to 
their civic duties, of the wealthiest class, 46 per cent, 
went to the polls; of the middle class, 37 per cent.; 

* The following extract from Collier's is worth quoting : 
" ' Idiots Vote in New York.' This is no joke. It is an 
illustration of the importance of ballot forms. The feeble- 
minded, who could not manage a Massachusetts ballot at all, 
are as good as anybody in New York. In 1900, when McKinley 
and Roosevelt were the Republican nominees, we happened to 
enter into conversation with an idiot friend, who may as well 
bear the name of Jerry. Handing him a sample ballot, we asked 
him how he intended to cast his vote. He made a cross under 
the eagle, and, in spite of attempts to confuse him, insisted 
that he was voting the Republican ticket. 'Who is running on 
that ticket?' we next inquired. 'Teddy and Matinny ' 
(McKinley), he replied. 'What is Teddy running for?' 'Oh, 
Teddy, he run for President.' 'And what is McKinley running 
for?' Jerry thought a moment. 'Matinny running for mayor, 
ain't he?' Continuing our instructive intercourse, we asked 
him if he approved of trusts. He did, and we asked then what 
he understood by trusts. Jerry smiled. 'When you go to the 
store, you get trusted,' he replied. Jerry, in our opinion, is in 
many respects a typical New York elector — an extrerne case, 
perhaps, but illuminating. Should the ballot not be arranged 
to meet the requirements of a somewhat more intricate intelli- 
gence ? " 



§426^] Peculiar American Municipal Difficulties. 487 

and of the poorest class, but 26 per cent. To be fair, it 
may be probable that the less wealthy classes were so 
poorly represented because they felt their influence was 
so slight. But if so, they would do well to meditate the 
parable of the talents. To be equally fair, it is possible 
that they stayed away because they are not as capable 
as more able men, of appreciating the reasons for going. 
That arrangement is not restricted to the Prussian 
cities . Vienna has something like it , but it is not popular 
— at least among people who want to spend other 
people's money. 

The actual experience of having the non- 
426 w. Where taxpayer vote regarding city expenses, is 
best taken care of . that SO far from the non-taxpayers' votes 
beinj necessary to secure them proper 
accommodations in cities, there is no sort of question that 
throughout the civilized world they get best accommoda- 
tions — education, parks, baths, gymnasiums, concerts, 
where they have fewest votes; and where they have 
most votes, they elect most people who steal the money 
that ought to be devoted to the voters' benefit, and 
alienate moneyed people from city improvement. 
As between the leading cities of the leading nations, 
which, at the beginning of the century, spent most 
money per citizen, those where suffrage was universal — 
Paris and New York, each spent more than London, 
Berlin or Vienna. But in the last three, unquestionably 
the people were best taken care of. The money, then, 
must have been stolen by officers elected by voters 
unfit to exercise the suffrage. 

Yet there seems small chance in our 
can oniy improue country of taking the suffrage away from 
wLThl'controiZ'^ ^^^ ignorant and shiftless for their own 
good — not as much perhaps as there is 
of curing their ignorance and shiftlessness. Those at 
least are things that anybody can begin on any day, 
and it is hard to tell how to raise the suffrage tests. 

Our need of easy ways of getting good men into 
office is almost equalled by our need of easy ways to 



488 The Promotion of Convenience. [§426^ 

get bad men out. A promising one has lately been 
introduced in Los Angeles, and is under consideration 
elsewhere. Under it, any elective municipal officer 
may be removed, and an election held for a successor, 
upon a petition containing verified signatures and 
addresses of a quarter as many citizens as voted for 
him. A similar law is now under agitation in New 
Jersey. 

This long history seems to prove what we had already 
reasoned out on general principles — that in America, 
at least, we would better move very cautiously in 
increasing our kinds of public work. Public works 
are the great source of public spoils. If we were to try 
to have at public expense all the good things that the 
best European cities have, we should simply succeed 
in throwing more food to political corruption, and thus 
to a large extent spending our money without getting 
what we spent it for. 

If all good citizens were alive to their political 
duties, those duties would not demand much care on 
the part of each. The community would then be pretty 
sure to take the ounce of preventive where it now has 
to pay for the pound of cure ; and it would moreover be 
saved the heavy taxation between the times when the 
preventive ought to have been applied, and the times 
when the cure must be. 

427. Universal It may reasonably be noted here that the 

impj^rindrndual- ^dvocatcs of universal suffrage must logic- 
ism, ally be advocates of laissez-faire. Those 
who claim that a given man is able to take care of the 
state, cannot logically claim that he needs the state to 
take care of him. If he is unfit to take care of himself, 
he must, in all reason, be unfit to take care of the state. 
Yet logical sequences can only follow one line of factors, 
and there may be in the situation many other factors. 
When the general line of motion, of a stone or a solar 
system is once determined, to get the exact line, many 
contributing factors must be investigated. Yet general 
principles — those that hold "other things even" — are 



§427] Peculiar American Municipal Difficulties. 489 

constantly of value in general reasoning. And this 
general idea of th^ logical relations of democracy and 
laissez-faire may often serve to guide one's opinions 
regarding democracy, or regarding laissez-faire. If you 
want government to perform a wide range of difficult 
tasks, let stupidity have as little to do with govern- 
ment as possible. If you want stupidity to have a 
large control in government, give government an in- 
versely small range of duties. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

RECREATIONS AND OTHER HELP TO THE LESS FORTUNATE 

CAPABLE. 

428. Museums and Now to leave mere "practical" conve- 
Libraries. niences, and turn to agencies of recreation 

and help. So far as municipalities provide them, they 
are of course subject to the difficulties 'already in- 
dicated ; but in some countries where universal suffrage 
has not yet been the rule long enough to "get in its 
fine work ' ' , government manages museums and libraries 
very well. In Germany, government even runs the 
theatres well; but in France under the Republic, the 
Paris opera has become a good deal of a botch, despite 
government patronage. 

In America, these things generally have been kept as 
far away from universal suffrage as possible. The offi- 
cials for museums and libraries are nowhere elected, tho 
in many places appointed by the mayors. The great 
museums in New York, however, are, fortunately, pri- 
vate corporations ; and so with the great library bene- 
factions of Astor, Lenox and Tilden; yet the city pro- 
vides the buildings for nearly all. So too, in other 
cities, most of the great benefactions of Peabody and 
Carnegie and their like are in the hands of private 
trustees. That rule has not been universal, however: 
in Boston, for instance, the Public Library, tho under 
city control, has been a brilliant success. But Boston's 
interest in library matters is almost unique. 

As to parks: our good German fellow 

^"^ ^' citizens have plenty of private ones, for 

picnicking and dancing and concerts, but private enter- 

490 



§43°] Recreations and Assistance. 491 

prise never did create a large one: all the private ones 
in New York could be lost in a corner of Central Park, 
not to speak of the newer public parks; and the same 
is true of the ratio of private parks to public parks 
elsewhere. Land for large parks cannot well be had 
without eminent domain: so they must be government 
institutions. 

In Europe, parks have generally been well managed. 
So they have in Boston and a few more of our cities. 
In New York it has been a constant, and not always 
successful, fight to keep ignorance and corruption from 
injuring them; and much similar experience has been 
had elsewhere in America. 

The best way yet devised to take care of them is 
by putting them under commissions to be selected, 
directly or indirectly, by artists, architects, engineers 
and other competent persons outside of politics. In 
New York, there has lately been great improvement 
made by having the artistic and engineering and Natural 
History societies appoint some of the park officers. 
There is also a Fine Art Commission appointed by the 
mayor, whose advice is often sought, and who can veto 
the designs and sites for public structures selected by 
the other bodies. This heads off the ignorance of the 
sort of managers dependent on universal suffrage. 

There is a strong economic argument for abundance 
of parks. It has gradually become plain that large 
tracts, especially cit}^- slums, can be taken and, with 
good management, partly turned into parks and boule- 
vards, and the whole expense paid by selling off the 
rest for building-sites. This has been done in many 
cities, especially in Europe. 

430. Clearing Improving the dwellings of the poor, 

s'""is. however, has not been done solely in this 

way. In most of the leading European cities, and a 
few American ones, the miserable, crowded, tumble- 
down, fire-trap quarters have been cleaned out, better 
streets put in, and healthier and safer houses put up, 
often with a profit on the whole transaction. Private 
enterprise also has generally gone in and put up better 



492 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 430 

buildings, tho very frequently they have been business 
buildings rather than better lodgings for the poor; and 
therefore the poor have, to a considerable extent, been 
merely driven to other slums. Yet certain it is that 
if the very worst slum is cleaned out, its occupants 
will be forced to one less bad, and their habits will 
receive at least a temporary improvement. In America, 
little more in this way has been done by municipal 
governments than occasionally putting a new broad 
sunny street through a slum, or widening an old street 
in it. There has lately, however, been a great increase 
in plans for such improvements. 

Plainly, such work cannot be left to private compe- 
tition: while it would be possible for individuals or 
private corporations to rebuild all the houses they could 
get possession of, possession of an entire district for 
the purpose of rearranging streets, would be impossible. 
Land for a new street is virtually a natural monopoly: 
for some of the owners of houses, hoping to benefit by 
improvement, or for other reasons, are sure to hold 
on to their own against every power less than govern- 
430 ra; Possible '^^'^^- Therefore under all ordinary cir- 
oniy under eminent cumstanccs, nothing can make such im- 
domam. provements properly and thoroughly but 

the one thing that can control a natural monopoly — 
eminent domain. 

430 r6; Graft '^^^ ^^*^^' generally perhaps, such im- 

provements in America have been political 
jobs: the politicians have, in advance, bought up the 
property to be benefited, often below its value, at rates 
established by themselves under eminent domain; and 
then on getting possession, they have sometimes turned 
around and got new valuations for damages, and col- 
lected them from the municipal treasury. On the 
whole, the schemes have, with us, too often been mere 
wholesale robberies of property-holders by the politi- 
cians, with some half-way advantage to the poor, and 
some incidental advantage to the community in general. 
European experience in the same lines has been that, 
as a rule, street-openings have not been attended 



§ 43°] Recreations and Assistance. 493 

with as much corruption as here, tho there was a 
remarkable exception when Napoleon III. made over 
Paris. 

430 (c). The nega- Something has been done by way of 
tive side. housing the poor in several of the British 

cities, Glasgow having taken the lead ; and somewhat less 
in Germany and France. There has been an improve- 
ment in health and character, and those who favor 
"municipal trading" claim that, on the whole, the 
buildings return a fair interest on the money invested. 

So much for the pOvSitive side. On the negative 
one, it is admitted that in Glasgow itself the houses 
do not quite return their interest, and that in London 
more people are driven out of the old buildings than 
the new ones can accommodate, and forced into quarters 
worse than the old. The new buildings are really 
fitted for a higher order of tenants, and some of them 
who would pay more than the rates charged, are actu- 
ally crowded away. In other words, the enterprise has 
been made a charitable one rather than a business one, 
and that, to the detriment of those dispossessed to 
make room for the new buildings. Private builders 
have stopped making accommodations for the poor: 
they will not compete with government charity: so, it 
is claimed, the very poor are worse off than ever. As 
to the sanitary and political aspects of the case, now 
the landlord — the municipality, is his own sanitary 
supervisor — nobody else to watch him; and his reelec- 
tion depends on his own tenants : so he is not apt to be 
very rigid with them. 

In face of the European experiences, we seem still 
less ready for success, at least in many of our large cities 
where it is most needed. In them, and in many of the 
small ones too, the government is so corrupt that the 
less it has to do, the better. Moreover, in house-building 
at least, tho not in street-opening, there is room for 
infinite competition. 

For Boston, the legislature has recently voted build- 
ings for the poor that must have so many good qualities 
that the poor cannot pay the necessary rent ; and building 



494 ^^^ Promotion of Convenience. [§ 430 

for them was at a standstill in the latter part of the cen- 
430 id). Success ^^"^y- I^ New York, Mr. Gould's company 
under private and some Smaller ones have provided vastly 
en erprise. improved houses at a reasonable profit, 

both in town and in the suburbs, and are having very 
great and growing success. Some, however, have done 
it at a loss ; and at least one who offered a special private 
entrance to each apartment, found that the peojDle 
preferred the sociability of the old common halls, despite 
its evil features. The use of bathtubs for coal-bins has 
become one of the standard humors of the subject. 
431, Housing the But some American local governments 
poor. have done something more directly for the 

housing of the poor, than taking property by eminent 
domain — especially in New York, where the conditions 
are worst, a good many laws have been enforced toward 
securing from the landlord, proper light, ventilation, 
drainage, and safety from fire. 

Some objection has been raised to this work on the 
ground that it was interfering with liberty of contract. 
Light, ventilation, drainage and safety all cost money: 
if a man wants to hire a cheaper place without them, 
why, it has been asked, interfere with his liberty to do 
m (a). Community ^"""^ Liberty, hke evcry other good 
should regulate it thmg, cau be run to an extreme. No man 
in self-defence. gj^Q^j^j ^g ^^ liberty to build or occupy a 

house which may start a pestilence through the whole 
community. If a man is so poor that he cannot afford 
to live in a better one, and if he will not leave the 
city (64 a, 646), it will be better for him, and cheaper 
for the community, for it to exercise its rights of 
self-defence, and put him in the poorhouse at once. 
The conclusion on the whole matter seems to be that 
in America, at least, the government would best require 
good sanitary conditions, and leave the rest to private 
enterprise and philanthropy. 

,09 p I We have but few good public baths, 

T"0 Z I rGrSORcll COR" -I'ij-i -iji ' 1 • 

veniences, army while they and other sanitary conveniences 
outfitting, etc. -^^ European cities are far in advance of 



§ 433] Recreations and Assistance. 495 

ours. Some European cities have provided public wash- 
houses for laundry work, and Glasgow has even taken 
in washing, because the women did not use the public 
wash-houses enough to make them profitable. In view 
of this, with their usual consistency, the socialists who 
have wanted the government to do everything, are 
objecting because government competes with the 
washerwomen. 

V/e come now to another class of government func- 
tions, and one whose appropriateness for government 
there is, probably, less dispute about. Until we reached 
the question of clearing out the slums, we had touched 
only matters in which the whole community is directly 
interested — questions of convenience that come home 
direct to almost every man, and where, as a rule, people 
can help themselves. But in the worst slums, we struck 
for the first time the class of people that need help. We 
have already admitted that everybody is interested in 
having city pest-holes cleared out. Similarly, every- 
body must be interested in having all those helped who 
need help ; so that (to put it on the lowest ground) they 

.-„ c A shall not spread disease and be led into 

433. Economy and . ^ , . . ,., ^. . , 

civilization iDotli pauperism and crimmality. it is cheaper 
require cliarity, ^^ have people helped to help themselves, 
than to increase the sanitary force, police force, and 
hospitals and courts and jails. 

We have seen before, for that matter (336), that 
civilization apparently depends upon the burdens of the 
unfortunate being borne by somebody else. Now shall 
they be borne by more able people, as individuals, or by 
the state? At first sight, it seems as broad as it is 
long: for as the able people pay the taxes, it seems to 
make no difference whether they give the money direct 
or through the state. But it does make a difference — 
all the difference in the world, and for at least three 
433 (a), preferably good reasons. The state does its coarsest 
from individuals, ^ork but poorly, and its finest work — 
the care of its unfortunates and defectives, it does 
abominably. Therefore the less of that work that it 



496 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 433 a 

has to do, and the more of that work that can be done 
by the exceptional men and women of the able classes, 
the better. 

It may well be asked: why should not government 
do the work by calling these exceptional people in to 
administer its charities and education? But too 
often in America it will not: for the reasons already 
given time and again. In America what little decent 
management of government charities there is, is either 
undertaken, as in Massachusetts, by state officials 
working without pay (who are very hard to get), or is 
forced on paid officials by the criticisms and aid of 
volunteer private associations like the New York Chari- 
ties Aid Society. In the leading cities of Europe, 
as a rule, the best people are called in by the govern- 
ments, and in large numbers, to administer the chari- 
ties. But those cities, outside of France, are not under 
universal suffrage; and France has not yet got very 
far into the habits universal municipal suffrage breeds. 

The second reason why government is unfit for the 
work is that the tendency of government administra- 
tion is to run into socialism, communism and all other 
forms of robbery of the minority by the majority. 

The third reason is the killing of the spirit of spon- 
taneous individual sympathy, from which, as is abun- 
dantly proved, and with increasing clearness every day, 
more is to be expected than is possible from govern- 
ment charity. 

Nevertheless, the most aid to the needy is supplied by 
the most advanced governments. As civilization begins, 
none of its conveniences are supplied by the govern- 
ment: the government attends only to defence and 
justice, "and precious little of that." In mediaeval 
434. Hospitals and Europe, schools and hospitals were first 
asylums. supplied exclusively by the churches, and 

are in Turkey to-day; and in Catholic countries, except 
perhaps Austria, there is now a larger proportion of 
them supplied by the churches than in Germany, 
England and America. 

In Protestant countries, schools and hospitals are 



§ 43 6j Recreations and Assistance. 497 

supplied both by private beneficence and by govern- 
ment. 

The ideal principle seems to be that government, 
which is the affair of all, should not undertake anything 
not needed by all. But we do not all use hospitals 
and asylums, and certainly not jails, and yet we all 
need that they should exist: so if private enterprise 
does not supply them, we have to depend on govern- 
ment. 

Regarding hospitals and asylums, it will not do to 
say too confidently whether government's share in 
them is increasing or decreasing. It seems most probable 
that in America, private gifts and bequests for them 
are gradually moving government's activity more and 
more into the background. In Europe, especially in 
Great Britain, the cities have lately been very active in 
improving them, and placing them in beautiful grounds. 

In Edinburgh, at the time of writing, there are not 
enough patients to fill the hospitals. 

In Glasgow, they have even gone so far as to provide 
a municipal boarding-house for families whose homes 
have to be disinfected after sickness. 

435. Relief to Indi- Relief for the poor has followed the same 
vidual Poor. course as the hospitals and asylums. Pri- 
vate beneficence is sparing government much need of 
increasing its activity in poor relief ; and what is better 
still, various private organizations for helping people 
to help themiselves, are even reducing the numbers of 
the poor, by turning them into the well-to-do, so redu- 
cing the need of government care of them. 

There is a peculiar situation in Great Britain and 
Ireland. The poor-law boards are not strictly part 
of the government, but are elected separately, and 
administer funds which are supplied both by govern- 
ment and private benevolence. 

,^^ „ ^ Pawnshops throughout the continent 

436. Pawnshops. r -c^ n j_ • 

01 Europe, are generally government in- 
stitutions. In England and America they have been 



498 The Promotion of Convenience. [§436 

conducted merely as private businesses until, about 
1895, the "Provident Loan Society", a purely philan- 
thropic organization, was started in New York to serve 
the poor cheaper than the pawnbrokers did ; and it has 
grown rapidly, and similar schemes are springing up. 

The arguments for government pawnshops are that 
they do not make extortionate charges, and are a 
great aid to the police in tracing stolen property. 

437. Savings-banks. Governments providing pawnshops have, 

with the exception of Belgium and Hol- 
land, also provided savings-banks — in fact, the banks 
have been to some extent evolutions from the pawn- 
shops, and in many countries are still connected with 
them. Oddly enough, paternal Germany has no Postal 
Savings-Bank, while all the other civilized European 
nations, have, except Switzerland. We have not, but 
w^e seemed on the brink of starting one about the 
beginning of the century. 

In England and America, pawnshops and savings- 
banks are both private, except the English Postal 
Savings-Bank. In countries where both are private, 
there is a very great difference in the character of the 
two — -greater in America, perhaps, than elsewhere. 
Here the pawnshops (except those of the Provident 
Loan Societies) are not prominent features in any way, 
while the savings-banks are among the great institutions. 

438. Lodging- ^^ to lodging-houses, had it not been 
'louses. for the recent boom in British munici- 
palization — which is showing startling symptoms of 
collapse (400 h, h, 414 a, b) — it would have been true 
that, as with pawnshops and savings-banks, lodging- 
houses also have been most freely provided by those 
governments, Germany at the head, which try to have 
toward the people a father's relation, of beneficence as 
well as of control. Republican France has fewer than 
Germany, and most of them are partly supported from 
private funds. In this regard Great Britain has been 
doing much to surpass the Continent. Glasgow has 



§ 439] Recreations and Assistance. 499 

the lead. She not only provides separate lodging-houses 
for men and women, but even has one for families (434). 
A small charge is made, and it pays a good interest 
on the investment. In America, homeless wanderers 
are permitted to sleep in the police-stations, but lately 
our people, whose habit it is, beyond that of all other 
peoples, to help the unfortunate to help themselves — 
and make the shiftless do it, have begun a most impor- 
tant device in that direction. There are already several 
places more or less like the Charity Organization Society's 
woody ard in New York, that will give supper, lodging 
and breakfast to anybody sawing his stint of wood; 
and they are often able to help applicants who appear 
deserving, to regular employment. There are also a 
laundry and sewing-rooms for women, on the same 
principles. 

438 (a). Throw Thcse institutions have thrown much 

light on street- light on Street -begging. They are partly 
^^^'"^' supported by the sale to the benevolent, 

of tickets directing applicants to them. These are 
bought and given by the purchasers to persons apply- 
ing to them for charity. Such a ticket seldom finds 
its way to woodyard or workroom, which proves that 
beggars will seldom work if the chance is given them. 

,^„ , ^ ^ There are government schemes for find- 

439. Labor bureaus, . 1 j: j.i 1 j •. rT^^ 

mg work for those who need it. The 

paternal governments — Germany at the head again^ 
generally provide labor bureaus. England provides 
them through the "Board of Trade", a half -govern- 
ment and half -commercial body; and in America, 
they took their start in connection with private chari- 
table associations, tho the recent agitation of ''Labor" 
for paternal governmental care, has led to the opening 
of labor bureaus (and making places in them for the 
politicians) by several cities. A fruitful illustration of 
"politics" was given in the Chicago labor bureau in 
'99. They refused to give any information to em- 
ployers whose men were on strike. 

Some good, however, "has been done in America by 



500 



The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 439 



government labor bureaus. Up to the close of the 
last century, Ohio and Illinois had state bureaus which 
had done enough good to the laborers, or the politicians, 
or both, to encourage Maryland to start one; and there 
was talk of having a chain of such bureaus all over 
the Union, which would help more idle labor to places 
where it was needed — ' ' a consummation devoutly to be 
wished." The new associations of employers have 
lately started a great many as reservoirs of labor to be 
drawn on in strikes. 

As to government itself furnishing actual employ- 
ment, outside of its legitimate need for- labor on public 
works: somehow it does not work well. There is 
always a boom in government work when there is a 
boom in other work: probably because then the offi- 
cials feel like everybody else — encouraged to go ahead, 
while they feel the effect of dull times in the converse 
way. It has often been proposed to have government 
work specially active in dull times when many men 
would otherwise be out of employment. France tried it 
in the public workshops after the revolution of '48, and 
made a frightful botch of it (34). More success has been 
had, especially in Germany and America, by lending 
people plots of land to work on their own responsibility. 
This has the advantage over the French system, that the 
laborer cannot get wages unless he earns them. 

..^ , Idleness before old age has been insured 

440. Insurance. • - 1 xi t, ^1 ^ j • j 

agamst only through the trade-unions and 

other organizations, but nearly all the nations of Europe, 
and also AustralavSia, have taken some steps regarding 
insurance against want in old age. Where premiums 
were demanded, it has, so far, not been found easy to 
make the workmen pay up. Numerous German cities 
have helped out the sickness and accident funds of 
many of the workmen's societies, and Germany is now 
trying to get a portion of their wages devoted to in- 
surance against the idleness of old age, by having that 
portion reserved when wages are paid. She does this 
under the partial disguise of making the employer pay 



§ 44i] Recreations and Assistance. 501 

the insurance — as if he would pay that, and also pay 
as high wages as otherwise — which of course he will 
not. Denmark gives a pension out and out. Ger- 
many and Italy add about an equal amount to whatever 
the beneficiary may have secured for himself. Some of 
the Australasian states supplement any income (or no 
income) that the beneficiary may have, by enough to 
bring it up to a fixed amount, which of course encourages 
.everybody to spend as he goes.* So far as old-age 
pensions can be provided for by insurance during the 
active period of life, they are in every way desirable; 
but if they come as gratuities, they are, of course, a 
premium on shiftlessness, like the Australasian schemes. 
There is danger of their becoming, like a good many 
other Australasian schemes, one of the sentimental fads 
for giving people perfectly able to take care of them- 
selves, something they do not earn. 

Insurances against idleness, illness and old age, are 
by no means the only insurances the governments have 
undertaken. In Berlin, even fire-insurance is a govern- 
ment function, and is made obligatory on all property 
owners. The same has been proposed in London. 
Some of the Australasian states have begun life-insur- 
ance. Here our sailors have long had to contribute to 
the marine hospital fund. 

... r^ , We have now s^one over about all of 

T-H"l u 6n6r3.l con— 

elusions regarding government work for helping the needy 
*^'^^'''*y' help themselves. One general truth re- 

garding it appears pretty plainly: Germany — the place 
where the people grumble most against government — 
where the desire for socialistic change is most important, 
is the place where government attempts most for the 
people; and the United States, where people are, on 
the whole, the' best satisfied, is where government does 
least for them. Yet the needy are not worse cared for 

* For a good treatment of this subject see the Review of 
Reviews for July 1900, pp. 95-97, and the books on Australasia 
already cited. 



502 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 441 a 

under our policy than under the opposite pohcy. 
,^,,, „ ^ , Apparently our people, left to themselves, 

44Ua;. Mutual -t^i; J ±- ^1 ' ' 

help better than do lor each Other, including their poor, as 

government help. ^^^^ ^^^ -^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ government 

succeeds in doing for any other people. 

It may be asked whether in Germany the socialistic 
agitation may not be the cause of the government's 
activity in charity, rather than the effect: so that if 
our people agitated more, government would effect 
more. Probably not: because in Germany the govern- 
ment's activity in charity began before the discontent 
became so great. 

Another principle seems to peep out in our examina- 
tion, or at least an expansion of the same principle. 
First we saw that in early times, charity was not politics, 
but religion. Now we see that in the nations politically 
most advanced, charity, tho no longer exclusively 
religion, is more effective than ever before, and still is 
not politics — or at least is politics in a less degree than 
in nations under more primitive political institutions. 
While a large proportion of the private support of 
charity still comes from religious people, it does not 
come in the old ways: in America there is no state 
..,,., T. church, and in England not half the 

441 {b). The ' . . ^ -r» 1 • • 1 

Church, the State, people belong to One. Religious people 
the Philanthropist ^^^ administer a large and increasing 

portion of their charities through secular bodies, and 
the care and subscriptions come more from a desire 
for their fellow man's present welfare, than for the 
donor's own future welfare. The new motive, however, 
is yet worthy to be called a religious one: the founder 
of the most advanced religion preached no motive 
more earnestly. But its action in the modern secular 
world is a very different thing from its action through 
the medieval priesthood. 

Do we propose, then, to do away with all govern- 
ment charity, and depend on private charity alone? 
Surely government cannot promote the general con- 
venience in any more general or more necessary way 
than by charity, or apparently in any more wasteful 



§441^] Recreations and Assistance. 503 

and less effective way. The fact that an end is good, 
is no proof that any one way to it is the best way, 
or even a good way. We should not be as prophetic 
as those who favor restricting us to either government 
charity or private charity. The question is too com- 
plicated to judge from anything but experience as it 
accrues. We have both kinds with us, and both kinds 
seem to result from an entirely natural evolution. The 
government charities cannot well evolve any faster than 
governments improve, at least to the point of keeping 
charities "out of politics" by securing unpaid charity 
officials; and the private charities cannot evolve any 
faster than human sympathies and ability improve — 
any faster than men grow rich, and rich men grow 
philanthropic, both of which growths have lately been 
very rapid. The only plain things to do, are to improve 
government and improve human nature, so that all 
charities may improve. 

And now let us descend from the statesman, the 
priest and the philanthropist, to that very common- 
441 (c). The place individual the taxpayer. Although 

taxpayer, {^ j^g natural to mention sanitation in 

connection with works for the general convenience, it 
really is part of the machinery for the protection of 
rights: it concerns taxpayers as well as non-taxpayers, 
and the questions of devoting to it the powers of 
government are not to be limited to considerations of 
•pecuniary profit. The same is true even of some forms 
of charity. Under health we may include freedom 
from the darkness and dirt of the soft-coal smoke. 
All these questions of cleanliness and light and quiet 
have their sesthetic side, and so are connected with 
the question of parks and museums. If taxpayers 
should bear the burdens of the first group, why not 
of the second? The question, however, is not as diffi- 
cult as at first it seems : for probably the taxpayers use 
the latter luxuries so much more than the non-taxpayers 
do; and the luxuries, of the parks at least, do so much 
for the health of those non-taxpayers whose illness 



^04 l^he Promotion of Convenience. [§ 441 c 

would threaten all with infection, that the taxpayer 
can well afford to pay for them. Paradoxical as it 
may seem, it is probably true that the taxpayers are 
often more in favor of such expenditures than the non- 
taxpayers. I was present once at a meeting in a small 
city to decide whether to buy land for a park. A 
demagogue who is a small taxpayer, rallied his cohorts, 
not half of whom were taxpayers, and defeated the 
scheme. His argument was: "Mr. So-and-so and 
Mr. So-and-so and Mr. So-and-so let us drive through 
their places: what more park do we need? " Yet all the 
Messieurs So-and-so were in favor of the park, tho 
they would have had to pay more for it than all its 
opponents put together, and tho they had parks of 
their own. 

Whatever opinion may be held of the right of the 
non-taxpaying majority to luxuriate in gaslight at 
the expense of the taxpaying minority, and whatever 
may be thought of the right of the badly-placed and 
badly-informed majority to secure sanitary conditions 
and medical help at the expense of the well-placed 
and well-informed minority, let us go a step farther 
and realize that there can be no question that it is 
to the interest of the minority that the majority should 
have the sanitary conditions at least. 

It is not easy to determine just how far **we are 
members of one another", but it is plain that we are 
far enough to make it to the rich man's interest that 
his poor neighbor should not be spreading infection, 
that his poor employee should be in health good enough 
to earn his wages, that none of his neighbors should at- 
tack his health by foul drainage, foul smells, and foul 
noises, and that the expense of raising his poor neigh- 
bor beyond the habit of spreading such, is an expense 
for the rich man to welcome. 

The question regarding libraries is a little like that 
regarding parks and museums, and a little more like 
that regarding sanitation. But altho there can be 
no doubt of the ultimate effect of the library in pro- 
tecting the property and liberty not only of the rich 



§ 441 d] Recreations and Assistance. 505 

man but of the poor man who is less able to protect 
his own, it must be admitted that the "little learning" 
which has so far been disseminated among the non- 
taxpayers at the expense of taxpayers, has been pre- 
eminently the "dangerous thing": for, so far, it has 
only awakened among the non-taxpayers dissatisfaction 
with their condition, without yet affording the enlight- 
enment necessary to discriminate the glittering short- 
cut quack remedies for it, from the sober and arduous 
real ones. 

The most effective settlement of the issue between 
the taxpayers and the non-taxpayers would be such 
an increase in the number of the taxpayers as to put 
them in the majority. On the part of the present tax- 
payers, ever}^ effort toward that end through public 
education and liberal business, is a noble form of en- 
lightened selfishness. 

The moral effects of such agencies are to be regarded 
as well as the physical and financial ones, as are also 
those of the more impressive laying-out of cities and 
grouping of public buildings, now happily receiving 
increased attention. That noble spaces and beautiful 
architecture tend to expand and chasten the minds of 
all who gaze upon them, there can be no question. 
Neither can it be questioned that the mere economies, 
not to speak of the higher satisfactions, of living in a 
community of broad-minded and honest people, can 
justify liberal expenditure on the part of those who 
pay the taxes, and tend to increase the number of 
them — a result which, we are constantly reminded from 
each successive point of view, is the iDCst security for 
an orderly and happy community. 

441 (d). Many im- But it is an Open question whether 
taxpliyers^ ""^ "^^ parks, boulcvards, and fine arrangements 
expense. of public buildiugs are at the expense 

of the taxpayers. The experience is quite general 
that the value of near-by property is increased by 
them more than they cost, and it is now proposed 
as a regular policy for cities in exercising eminent 



5o6 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 441 d 

domain for those purposes, to take enough more land 
than immediately needed, to make its sale at the 
increased values compensate the expense of the im- 
provement itself. Unless this is done, the unearned 
increment goes into private hands, except so far as it 
is secured to the city by the increased assessments on 
the adjoining property. Probably the old method of 
taking only the property actually devoted to the im- 
provement, makes more room for graft than the more 
modern method of taking adjoining property too : under 
the new method, politicians would probably find it more 
difficult to buy for an advance. The community in 
general would be more apt to secure the advance. 

The question whether the advances near parks and 
boulevards are apt to be great enough to pay not only 
for the land taken, and its improvement, but also 
provide a fund for its maintenance, is not as well 
settled regarding the last particular as regarding the 
others; but regarding the annual expense, there is no 
complaint worth considering from those who pay it, 
and certainly none from those who do not. 

But in considering these subjects, it is most important 
constantly to bear in mind that the only men who really 
are non-taxpayers are tramps, jailbirds, inmates of 
asylums, or dependents on their friends. Everybody 
who pays rent, pays taxes; every servant who lives in 
his employer's house, gets less wages than he would 
if no taxes were paid on that house. Let the sentence 
stand as expressed, so that I may tell the young student 
that it again illustrates the complexity of the subject. 
Before I had finished it, I reflected that, as we shall 
see hereafter, taxes are not diffused or even levied with 
mathematical justice, and that servants' wages are regu- 
lated by dozens of agencies, some of which may counter- 
act the effectiveness of that of taxation. "Every" is 
a word that winters on social subjects should use spar- 
ingly. Of the taxation question, however, my young 
friend will probably see all that he wants later. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

THE DEFECTIVE CLASSES. 

As we have already seen (227), there is no cause 
of poverty. Every man is born absolutely poor. 
Wealth alone is caused. Yet there must be some 
reason why people suffer from poverty rather than 
cause wealth. Temporary poverty may result from 
temporary misfortune, sickness and accident (we 
442. The persist- have already discussed the means of 
entiy poor. helping such cases) , but some people are 

always poor — give them work and they do not keep it ; 
help them up and they slip back, all from sheer incapa- 
city — physical, mental or moral, — to produce enough 
for comfort. "Physical" will generally describe it, if 
in "physical" is included a defective nervous system. 

It is legitimate to inquire what duties in the way of 
taxpaying, these incapable people perform, that give 
them rights to have taxes spent upon them. Our 
whole system is built up on the principle that the 
citizen has no rights if he does not perform the cor- 
responding duties ; and to deprive him of the rights if he 
does not perform duties, is the only way to make him 
behave himself. Yet a baby or a lunatic apparently 
performs no duties, and still the state secures to a 
baby or a lunatic, rights to life and property. What 
becomes of our whole system, then? The answer is 
that the state can be generous if it wants to, just as a 
parent can. Nor does it all end in generosity: the state 
needs citizens — sometimes even to the extent of paying 
bounties for large families: so it is well for it to pro- 
tect the babies. 

507 



5o8 i he Promotion of Convenience. [§ 442 a 

But it does not need incapables and lunatics too, 
and the question why they should not be left to die 

442 (a). Neglect ^^^' ^^^ ^^^. ^ §^^^^ ^^^^ °^ ^^^7 P^^" 

incr eases the found discussion. Leaving out Sentiment, 
number. ^^^ ^-^^^ ^-^^ chance that a habit of neglect- 

ing them would soon discipline us to let some starve 
who ought not to, one sufficient argument seems to be 
that they will not "die out" when you leave them to, 
but that in countries where they are neglected most, 
they increase most. Then there is the argument that we 
glanced at before: states which do not take care of 
their incapables, do not get ahead as well as states that 
do. China and very backward countries generally let 
them starve. Civilized Europe and America take 
care of them. It is a very mysterious business: per- 
haps it will not do even to say that such people are 
of no use: for some very fine types of character seem 
to be developed by taking care of them. Yet that 
result does not seem to have uniformly followed political 
control of charitable institutions — in America at least: 
there have been a good many frightful abuses and 
scandals. 

Private institutions are more nearly free from such 
than the government ones. Yet government alms- 
houses and poorhouses may be considered 
as established beyond debate. But when 
the nervous defects mentioned amount to positive in- 
sanity, the care of the insane is left to private initiative 
in India, Turkey and China, and it was in Christendom 
pretty nearly to the middle of the nineteenth century. 
In Christendom before that, the poor insane were left 
at large, or caged away somev/here in the cellars of 
the poorhouses, and the rich insane were cared for at 
home or in private asylums conducted for gain. Since 
then, there have been some considerable asylums built 
from private benefaction, as well as government asylums 
everywhere as needed. Probably the general in- 
crease of government asylums during the last half- 
century sprang largely from government's increased 
protection of the citizen from violence. Moreover, the 



§ 444 <^] ^^^ Defective Classes. 509 

increased realization that criminality and insanity are 
closely allied, increased a tendency to send delinquents 
to asylums and reformatories rather than to prisons. 

Prisons should be more like asylums. 

. eerimina. ^^ j^^^ intimated, it has become estab- 
lished that criminals are only a kind of lunatics. True, 
some of them are very intelligent, but so are some of 
the people in insane asylums — outside of a few special 
weaknesses — and directions of the wind and phases 
of the moon. This is worth looking into carefull}^ 
There are few things in which the state is farther be- 
hind the scientific world, than the treatment of all sorts 
of defective people, criminals especially; and every citi- 
zen needs to get the best ideas that have been reached 
on the subject, and to do what he can to bring the 
state up to them. 

A criminal has no passions that other men have not, 
unless it is the passion for goodness that inspires some 
rare souls. Then criminals do not sin merely because 
they have the passions that all men have — for gold or 
love or power, or even revenge; but because they lack 
the qualities that in better men keep the same passions 
under control. 

444 (a). Generally Among thcse restraining powers, the first, 
defective. perhaps, is a capacity of realizing conse- 

quences. The savage and the criminal live only in 
the moment. When lying or thieving or killing is 
the immediate way out of a difficulty (and they have 
so little forethought that they are generally in diffi- 
culty), they prefer it to a slower way, and have none 
of the evolved man's shrinking to overcome. 

Criminals generally are found to be even physically 
less sensitive than normal people: they tattoo them- 
selves to a degree that normal people cannot stand; 
they do not shrink as normal people do from the sight 
of blood; generally speaking, they are indifferent to 
losses — of money, keepsakes, opportunity, friends, rela- 
tives, their own children; they do not themselves know 
enough of pain to be deterred by sympathy with others 



5IO The Promotion of Convenience. [§444a 

from inflicting it. In a word, they are defective, just 
as lunatics and chronic paupers are. Anybody who 
has sat in a criminal court can see that, with rare 
exceptions, they are smaller, weaker and stupider than 
ordinary men. The best science declares that they 
should be treated as other defectives are. 

In detail: the best science begins with Mrs. Glass's 
famous recipe for cooking hare: "first catch your hare" 
— first catch your criminal — be sure you have got a 
criminal. If you catch a boy who for the 
step does "ot^^^"^ first time has yielded to some strong temp- 
fri'mhSr^^ '^ tation, do not send him to jail to keep 
company with past-masters in crime, and 
be taught by them — do not make your criminal in that 
way. After you have scared him so that he will not do 
it again unless he has a strong natural bent that way, or 
rather a great lack of the qualities that would prevent 
his doing it again, let him go. If he has the lack, 
and does do it again, then send him where he will be 
treated for a cure — to some reform school where he will 
be trained in regular ways, and taught self-control and 
some honest industry, and, perhaps most important, 
where he will be cured of the physical defects that are 
almost always found in criminals. And especially do 
not let him out until you are satisfied that the treat- 
ment has been successful. Hearty approval is due 
the "Children's Courts" which have done so much to 
keep juvenile offenders away from the criminal educa- 
tion of the jails, and start them toward worthy lives. 
444 (c). The inde- If the offender appears to be made over 
terminate sentence, ^\\ right, and is let out, and goes bad again, 
repeat the process. By that time, tho, the authorities 
should be pretty well convinced that he cannot be cured, 
and should not let him out at all unless he gives over- 
whelming proof that he has been cured. If he cannot be 
taught and cured, keep him till he dies. 

Sentencing a criminal for a definite length of time, is 
now regarded by all authorities on the subject, as absurd: 
there is no reason to suppose that the judge can tell 
how long it is going to take to effect a cure, or that if 



§444^] The Defective Classes. 511 

half a dozen men are sent up for the same time for the 
same crime, it is going to take just the same time to 
cure any one as to cure any other, 

A still stronger objection to a sentence that can 
terminate before a man is cured, is that nearly all the 
worst crimes are committed by men who are turned loose 
from prison simply because their "time is up", without 
any reference whatever to whether they are fit to be 
at large. As most criminals are insane, it is correspond- 
ingly insane to attempt to draw a hard-and-fast line 
between them and other madmen, either in diagnosis 
or treatment. Nobody thinks of committing an ordi- 
nary lunatic for a definite period. 

444 (d). Cheaper "^^^ systcms of puuishment that we 
to keep rounders havc inherited, were not based on any 
permanen y. {^Q^i of curing the criminal. They were 
based on the old idea of retaliation, and on the vSome- 
what better one of deterring others. Until recently, 
the criminal was not even regarded as defective or 
diseased, but rather as "the natural man". Now that 
he is proved to be the unnatural man, the indeterminate 
sentence is the only thing to fit the new discovery, and 
it should be indeterminate in fact as well as in name. 
The criminal should be released as soon as he is cured, 
but kept until he is cured. 

It may seem an extreme idea that criminals should 
be supported in dignified retirement at the expense of 
honest people, but there seems no other way, except 
to "remove" them, which we will consider later. 

The idea of support at the expense of the state is 
quite the rule among the criminals themselves: generally, 
as soon as they have served time on one charge, they get 
themselves sent up on another. Most do it, however, 
from sheer absence of self-control. Every penitentiary 
contains men serving their tenth or twelfth term. It 
would be cheaper to keep them steadily after their 
third, and save the community from their later depre- 
dations and the expense of their arrests, trials and 
carriage back to prison. 



5i2 The Promotion of Convenience. [§4446? 

New York already has a law that when a man has 
been demonstrated an habitual criminal, the courts 
can control him in many ways that they have not the 
power to do in the case of ordinary criminals. 
444 (e). Prison There are certainly some honest persons 

labor. Y^ho agree with the criminals in thinking 

that prisoners ought to have a life of ease at the expense 
of the state. The trade-unions, the country over, 
object to prisoners being made to earn their own living, 
on the ground that they would be competing with 
honest labor. Their competition would really amount 
to very little. Somewhere about one person of every 
five hundred old enough to earn a living, is in prison. 
Of course if their competition actually lowered the price 
of labor in proportion to their numbers (which it could 
not begin to: for they are inefficient), it would reduce 
wages but one fifth of a cent on a dollar. But what the 
idleness of the prisoners actually does, is that, as the 
community has. to support the prisoners, the wage- 
earner pays his share of keeping them in idleness. He 
may think that he does not, because he generally pays 
no taxes. But as we shall see later, taxes distribute 
themselves so that the wage-earner who may pay none 
directly, actually does pay them indirectly, in increased 
prices of nearly everything he uses — from his house to 
his matches; and he also probably pays taxes by 
getting less wages than he would get if the man who 
pays the wages paid less taxes. 

The wage-earner resists setting the prisoners to work, 
because he thinks and knows very little about what 
affects his outgo, and thinks very much, tho still 
knowing very little, about what affects his income. 
His only thought is to keep wages high; he does not 
reflect that everything which raises wages, except the 
efficiency of the worker, must raise prices too. Per- 
haps the spasm of high prices and high nominal wages 
occurring about 1905-7 may lead to a little reflection on 
the relation between them. 

As between the unions and the prisons, a unionist 
makes one kind of goods; the prisoners could make, 



§445] The Defective Classes. 513 

say, a dozen kinds that the man uses. Assuming him 
to reason correctly that if he prevents their making 
the goods he makes himself, he keeps up his own wages, 
he nevertheless pays the higher price for the dozen 
kinds he does not make, with enterprisers' and middle- 
men's profits thrown in, while he gets the benefit of 
the higher first cost of only the kind he makes himself. 
We treated this fallacy before (228 b), when we con- 
sidered the efforts to raise prices by scamping work or 
lazing, and to make every man rich by making money 
poor (361). This time, the laborer does not laze him- 
self, but he wants other people to laze, which affects 
him as a consumer. We shall meet the same fallacy 
again when we come to taxation. 

Grave consideration has been given, 
445. Euthanasia. ^^^ ^-^^ ^^^^ ^^ giYen, to the question 

whether it would not be cheaper and safer and better 
in all ways, even for the incurable criminal himself, 
and also for the other hopelessly insane, to turn on 
the gas in his room some cold night when the windows 
are shut, or end the sad and repulsive problem of his 
life in some other painless way — euthanasia, as the 
Greeks called it. Two reasons are urged against it: 
the responsibility of deciding what people to favor 
with it, is too great to trust our politicians with; and 
familiarity with the infliction of death, even if done 
secretly and decently, is too apt to brutalize the sensi- 
bilities of the public. True, government decides now 
on whom to kill, but it decides with a stupidity more 
colossal, if possible, than it shows on any other question, 
unless that of "the illiterate voter". As a rule, it 
kills for but one crime, and in that connection does 
not attempt to consider the question of a man's re- 
claimability at all. How, then, is it in any shape to 
decide the very delicate question of v^hether, on the 
whole, a variety of offences point out a man as irre- 
claimable or not? Moreover, under the present 
power of the boss, it might be exceedingly dangerous 
to enlarge government's power of inflicting death. 



514 The Promotion of Convenience. [§445 

It might not take long to virtually, if not nominally, 

get back to the old ways where the death -penalty was 

freely used in mere political conflict. -It does seem 

hard, however, that when people are ready to waste 

thousands of the best lives in the community in trifling 

wars, they cannot be educated up to destroying a few 

hundred pestiferous lives for the sake of ridding the 

world of insanity and crime. 

But it is probable that by the time the 

446. A society able communitv is educated that far, it will be 
to use ideal remedies -. x 1 "t. 1 • • vx ^i -n 

will not need them, educated beyond crimmahty — there will 
be no criminals to treat. Euthanasia is 
like the other short-cut remedies — not only for crimi- 
nality but for uncongenial marriages and poverty and 
most of the evils that afflict society: by the time 
people are educated so as to be fit to handle euthanasia, 
free divorce, communism, socialism and the rest of the 
short-cut remedies, they will be educated beyond the 
infirmities of health and temper and judgment that 
make the criminality and the unhappy marriages and 
the poverty. 

What we have said regards only the 
dS'hlsTpe'naity. Scientific question of disposing of incurable 
criminals without waiting for them to 
commit what are now called "capital" crimes. But 
there has been much question also about the advisability 
of the death-penalty for the capital crimes. Capital 
punishment has been done away with in Michigan, 
Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Iowa and Maine, and in 1906 
they were agitating its abolition in Vermont. Iowa and 
Maine restored it, but in Maine at least, the restoration 
is virtually a dead letter. 

The civic arguments (the religious ones are outside 
of our present studies) in favor of the death-penalty 
for murder, arson, etc., are that nothing else is so effi- 
cient as a preventive of such crimes, that life-sentences 
cannot be enforced, and that so far as they are enforced, 
they crowd the jails with people that it is more expen- 
sive to keep than to hang. The arguments against it are 



§447] The Defective Classes. 515 

that it brutalizes the community — to such an extent 
that statistics do not prove capital crimes less frequent 
where the death-penalty exists ; that statistics also prove 
juries less apt to convict in face of that penalty, even of 
the minor degrees of crime not involving the death- 
penalty : and so criminals are more apt to go free ; that 
it shuts the eyes to the whole great question of reforma- 
tion; that it forever prevents the correction of a mis- 
take in the conviction of an innocent person; and, 
finally, Carlyle's argument that the worst use you can 
put a m.an to is to hang him — in short, that capital 
punishment is not only brutal but stupid. There can- 
not be much doubt of its brutality, but brutality is 
sometimes necessary, even at the hands of as good 
men as Gustavus Adolphus and George Washington; 
but stupidity never is. As to the stupidities which 
statistics do not touch: first as to reformation. There 
is certainly more chance, in one sense, of reforming a 
murderer, than of reforming most other criminals, 
because other criminals are not apt to be taken hold 
of in earnest at their first offence, while a murderer, 
tho it be his first offence, is reasonably sure to be. 
But moreover and most important, there are so many 
more possible motives for killing than for m^ost crimes, 
that there is a proportionally wide chance of its being 
committed by a reformable person; it may even be 
a rough form of justice, while few other crimes can 
be. Probably most life-sentences are for killing, 
and yet the report of the New York superintendent of 
prisons, for 1895, says that of the life-term prisoners 
who have been released during the past thirty-five 
years, less than one per cent, have again committed 
crimes. Everybody knows that those discharged after 
serving short sentences for minor crimes, are nearly 
sure to err again. But on the other hand, killing 
ordinarily requires more insensibility to suffering than 
minor crimes do, and therefore is proportionally apt 
to be the work of a defective person. As a rule, the 
murders are not committed by Peter Ibbetsons 

As to Carlyle's argument, an average man is variously 



51 6 The Promotion of Convenience. [§447 

figured to be worth, to an average community, ten times 
as much as a horse, and convict labor is generally 
figured as worth about a third of average labor. So 
the murderer, if no meaner brute than convicts in general, 
is, at best, worth (if the trade-unions will let him work) 
not more than six hundred dollars; and with all the 
usual fuss and fees, it costs more than that to kill him. 
But on the other hand, it costs more still to keep him 
alive: so Carlyle's argument is worthless. And if, as 
in many cases, probably most, the murderer is an out- 
and-out defective natural-born criminal, it is certainly 
cheaper to kill him than to stand the chance of his 
getting out again ; but even then, it would seem sensible 
to test his quality first, if science and politics were 
advanced enough to do it. 

The whole question sums up like so many others — as 
long as people are brutal and stupid, they must do some 
brutal and stupid things. War — with either guns or 
tariffs, lynch-law and capital punishment are really 
all of a piece : there is no question of their frequent neces- 
sity now — there are times and places when to do without 
SQme one of them, is to do worse. Yet so far as we 
advance justice and science, so far we work for the 
disappearance of them all. 

We may have been a little irregular in considering 
the care of the criminal as among society's functions 
for the general convenience, when it is really a matter 
of protecting against him the community's rights to 
property, safety and life. But we have had. more than 
one occasion to realize that no system of classification we 
can make, will group all the matter to be considered, in 
hard-and-fast divisions. Of course the criminal could 
properly have been considered when we were treating 
of protecting rights; but perhaps, after all, to include 
him with the other defectives whom society treats for 
the general convenience, will help us realize his true 
position and true needs. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE young; education. 

And now we come to a more cheerful topic, even 
tho it regards another class of those who, begging their 
pardon, are defective and cannot help themselves — the 
young. 

As affecting the sphere of government, we need to 
inquire whether when they lose their relatives, or their 
relatives do not care for them, they are generally 
cared for, in the most advanced states, by government 
or by private institutions. Perhaps the care of orphans 
remains with the churches more than any 

' "'' "''^' other form of charity — probably largely 
because each church wishes to make sure of retaining 
them in its own membership. Moreover, the state is 
also often saved from their care by the fact that many 
persons who have raised themselves from a childhood 
of. needy orphanage to a manhood of wealth and be- 
neficence, have endowed orphan asylums. The two 
causes have done much to limit the need of govern- 
ment activity in this respect. 

,.^^, , But beyond TOvernment's limited care of 

449, Education. ji i -i i 11 . • r 

the children who do not receive care irom 

relatives or private beneficence, its relation to the edu- 
cation of children in general, presents some strange 
paradoxes. The two civilized governments which have 
been most active in it are probably the most paternal 
and the least paternal, Germany and the United States. 
The paternalism of course accounts for Germany, but 
for this strange outcrop of paternalism in the United 

517 



51 8 The Promotion of Convenience. [§449 

States, we have to look back to the facts that the 
early settlers, especially of New England, contained 
an exceptionally large proportion of people "who appre- 
ciated education, and that they realized, while the 
government was taking shape, that universal education 
was a necessary safeguard against the dangers of uni- 
versal suffrage. These dangers they did not them- 
selves generally incur: for they generally held to 
property qualifications, as well as educational ones. 
449 (a). The iiiit- But in the idea that education is neces- 
ei-ate voter. sary to the voter, their descendants are 

inconsistent to a degree of absurdity before which even 
ridicule itself is paralyzed: while on one hand we in- 
sist that the voter must be educated, on the other we 
devise ballots with emblems, so that they can be voted 
by people who cannot read. 

449 (b). Unusable There are signs in the two countries 
education. which lead in education, that even so good 

a thing as education may be overdone; or at least, 
lately there have been very portentous signs, espe- 
cially in Germany, that it can be done very much 
out of proportion. While, as is generally knowm, Ger- 
many's splendid technical education is spreading her 
manufactures over the world, she is having trouble with 
many men educated in the old-fashioned literary^ 
gossip-historical and would-be-philosophical way, who 
can find nothing to do. Her paupers, and especially 
her suicides, are being largely increased from this class. 
Other governments, too, despite some recent improve- 
ment, are spreading too much education of a kind that 
is not needed, and which on that account is perhaps 
doing more harm than good. The infection has spread 
even to Greece — perhaps because she is busier with her 
glorious past than with her needy present. 
449 cc;. Usable Most boys are to be mechanics, farmers 

education. ^^^ tradesmen; and all are to be voters: 

they should be educated as such, instead of having the 
education that was established hundreds of years ago 
for priests, and in nations where nobody voted. There 
is knowledge enough that can be useful in the factory, 



§449^] ^^^^ Yoiing; Education. 519 

the farm, the counting-house and at the primary meeting, 
in debates with neighbors, and at the polls, to take up 
many times the years that our boys can give to school. 
The European cities have a much wiser policy than 
ours in this regard. They usually have excellent schools 
to teach the arts most generally practiced in the cities — 
everything from ship-building to carpet-designing, de- 
pending on what the city is interested in. 

449 (d). Practical ^^^ °^ coursc it is not desirable that a 
education no foe hoj should grow up merely a business and 
to poetry, political machine. But a man who knows 

any subject well will find the borders of it touching 
everything else. Every science and every art are fringed 
with poetry: read Kipling's "MacAndrew's Hymn" and 
Patrick Henry's speeches. 

As to the girls, most of them are to keep the homes 
and rear the families of men of moderate means : so it is 
absurd to educate most of them for ornaments of the 
homes of the rich. If there is no poetry in the kitchen 
and the nursery, there is no poetry in Burns or in 
Rafael's Madonnas. 

449 (e). Pauper- In some placcs there has been a tendency 
ization. -^q expand education into pauperization. 

Beginning very sensibly with medical care to prevent 
contagion, and sending public vehicles for the children 
in bad weather, to prevent colds, they have gone on 
to providing them with thick shoes, then with thick 
clothes (or thin ones as needed) , and then with lunches ; 
and at the present rate, we can look for schemes to pro- 
vide them with watches to tell when it is school time. 

The objection to providing the poor ones with at 
least the necessary things, is that while it would do 
good in a few instances, it would do harm in more. 
Already parents perfectly able to take care of their chil- 
dren, are, as experience proves, only too ready to throw 
the burden on the state; and the whole scheme shows 
itself to be one of those, like socialism and the money 
tricks, for national pauperization. As soon as the state 
undertakes to go beyond taking care of defective paupers, 
those who can earn a living begin to depend on the 



520 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 449 e 

state, to shirk work, to seek to rob by taxation, and so 
to choke off benevolence. 

Where the matter has been left to private initiative, 
much has been done to render poor children fit to go to 
school. In Paris and several other large French cities 
there are societies of benevolent people called "school 
treasuries" {caisses des ecoles) who help poor children 
to most of the good things we have been talking about, 
and many more ; but they take good care, as our Charity 
Organization Societies do (and as no government 
organization will in our time), to find out where help 
should be given, and where it should not; and not to let 
the other children know who the dependent ones are. 
But all that is voluntary benevolence, not the act of a 
lot of American political heelers spending money seized 
by mere brute force of votes. 

Those French societies, however, are not entirely sup- 
ported by private benevolence : the cities subsidize them , 
as some American cities subsidize libraries , ' ' settlements ' ' , 
etc. (a doubtful policy) ; but at bottom they are volun- 
tary, both in their workers and in their subscriptions. 

449 (f) state's ^^^ qucstiou whether education itself is 

responsibility well within the proviucc of governm-ent, or 
esta IS e , should be left entirely to private initiative, 

may perhaps be considered as having passed beyond the 
area of discussion. There is no sense in gainsaying the 
course of evolution — it has moved education, along with 
charity, from the church to the state. That the govern- 
ment ought to supply elementary education for those 
whose parents cannot supply it, or cannot be made to, 
is generally admitted by all but some members of one 
church. That one church wants to have its religious 
doctrines impressed in education. It claims that as the 
state cannot do that for each sect, no one should be 
obliged to pay for state education if he would prefer to 
educate his children otherwise. 

449 (g). Parents Religion, however, is not the only con- 

shouid pay when sidcratiou pointing the same way. The 

state is supplying education without cost 



§ 45o] ^^^ Yotmg; Education. 521 

to children whose parents are able to supply it. All 
the arguments hold against it which hold against social- 
ism; moreover, proper education is the most difficult, 
delicate and expensive work human beings have to do ; 
government, especially in America, has vastly more to 
do, of even much coarser work, than it can do well; 
hence many parents prefer private schools, and claim 
that they themselves should not be taxed to educate, 
in the public schools, children of other parents who 
are able to pay the full cost. 

But as everybody should pay for those whose parents 
cannot, a practical division could be made by having 
taxpayers who send their children, pay for them di- 
rectly, and by having the other children paid for out 
of the taxes. This would still make the taxpayers edu- 
cate the children of the poor. This is done in Great 
Britain. All children must be paid for. Those whose 
parents cannot pay, are paid for by the Guardians of 
the Poor. . Pains are taken, as by the French societies, 
to prevent the charity pupils being identified. The Hol- 
land system is somewhat similar. 

450. The higher So much as to elementary education, 

education. ^7"g have already touched upon govern- 

ment and the higher education, when we spoke of the 
education that most boys and girls need. To give the 
higher education to the ordinary run of minds, even if 
they could assimilate it, is as great folty as to train 
ordinary horses for racing. But tho the state needs all 
its best minds at their best, badly enough to well afford 
to educate them, it is very certain that the state is not 
the best agency to educate them to their best. More- 
over, after the state has got them through the grammar 
school — certainly through the high school, those wor- 
thy of farther education can be trusted to find the rest 
of the way themselves: there is money waiting in all 
the colleges for poor students who have the pluck and 
talent to make their higher training worth while. 

Besides waste and pauperization, supplying the higher 
education is ordinarily too delicate work for govern- 



52 2 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 450 a 

ment. When so many of the leading universities are 
^^„ , , ,, ^ ,, having trouble to find fit presidents, we 

AbO (a). Not well & 1 • . i x 

conducted by hardly Want the choice restricted to men 

political pulls, ^.^j^ political pulls. While paternal Ger- 
many is sometimes said to have the finest universi- 
ties in the world, the statement is open to some ques- 
tion. Kaiser Wilhelm has caused the dismissal of more 
than one professor whose doctrines he did not like ; but 
despite that, in his universities the instruction is not 
paid for by the government, or even prescribed by it 
to the same extent as in our American state universi- 
ties. On the contrary, the students sit under what pro- 
fessors they please, and the professors are largely paid 
bv the fees of the students attending their courses, 
instead of by fixed salaries out of a general fund, as 
in nearly all our universities. 

.rr^.u. T, ^ 4. It is very hard to tell whether the 

450 rW. The state, r i ^- ^ i 

the church, the course oi evolution secms toward or away 
philanthropist f-pom government providing the higher edu- 
cation: the conditions are very mixed, especially in 
Europe. In American experience, some question may 
arise between the state universities and the denomi- 
national universities, and more can arise between the 
state universities and the private undenominational 
universities. This cannot be entirely due to circum- 
stances: Harvard and Yale were evolved before the 
state universities, but Johns Hopkins and Cornell and 
Chicago were not. 

On the whole, the state universities have borne up 
wonderfully under the usual danger of interference by 
ignorant and selfish politicians. Speaking generally, 
they flourish best in comparatively new regions. That 
suggests, of course, that until a community has pro- 
gressed far enough in wealth, culture and philanthropy to 
build up great universities on foundations independent 
of the state, it seems on the whole very fortunate to 
have the state do what it can to remedy the deficiency. 
But that should not be taken as a finality in a new com- 
munity, and still less is it proved ideal in an old one. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ON THE SPHERE OF 
GOVERNMENT. 

This is about all we have time to consider in detail 
regarding government's promotion of the general con- 
venience. Now, at the cost of some repetition (which 
the pressing importance of the subject may justify) let 
us sum up. 

The supplying of conveniences by government appears 
to be a natural evolution, being, on the whole, con- 
siderably farther advanced in the highly evolved nations 
than in others. The objects first coming under govern- 
ment care are generally the natural monopolies — like 
streets and roads, with the rails and pipes that maybe 
laid in them; and other matters too large for indi- 
viduals, or, in some cases, for private corporations. 
Street railways, waterworks, lighting works have all 
been carried out by private enterprise, but as they are 
naturally monopohes, they have tended to become ex- 
tortiona,te, and the communities have sometimes been 
driven to assume them in self-defence: even the steam 
railroads have needed legislative regulation of rates. 

Yet there has been grave doubt of the wisdom of 
government's providing anything but national defence 
and the protection of rights. From very 
and'cSivismf"" ^arly times, this has been perhaps the 
most prominent question dividing stu- 
dents of government. Yet there is a growing realiza- 
tion that when wise men differ, both are apt to be 
right. Aristotle, the first systematic writer on politics, 
himself took both sides. Those who have held what 

523 



524 The Promotion of Convenience. [§ 451 

is sometimes called the restriction theory, are finding 
it harder and harder to draw the line. They have 
about all admitted the necessity of government money, 
mails, roads, harbors, lighthouses, surveys, almshouses, 
health boards and many other things ; and have thought 
it well that government should provide that no one 
need starve or freeze, or even go grossly ignorant or 
dirty. 

The main objections urged against government under- 
taking so many things, have been, first, that people 
helped too much by government, lose the tendency and 
the ability to help themselves; second, that the more 
government has to do — the more money it has to spend, 
the more danger of its becoming corrupt and tyrannical ; 
and third, that even where fairly honest, it is apt to be 
unprogressive, obstructive and expensive. On the first 
objection, it is to be said that there is very little experi- 
ence to learn from: governments have not anywhere 
been doing most of these things long, and some of the 
governments that have done most of them, have long 
been doing other things, such as keeping up a very 
rigorous and minute police control, which would alone 
account for any lack of independence there may be 
among their peoples. 

The situation of the leading countries in these re- 
spects looks paradoxical. We have our merits as a 
nation, and so far we have municipalized least among 
the great nations. Up to about 1885, when railroads, 
pawnshops, hospitals and schools had been the main 
conveniences cared for by government, the order of 
the other nations in degree of municipalization, prob- 
ably would have been Germany, France and Great 
Britain. But more recently the increase of municipal- 
ized street railways, water, gas, electricity and poor- 
man's homes, has probably put Great Britain, espe- 
cially Scotland, at the head; and the independence 
452, Municipailza- ^^^ initiative of these various peoples 
tion increases with stand in about the same order with the 
creases wi"th^polfce municipalization of public works. With 
control. reference to minute police control, these 



§ 45^^] ^^^ Sphere of Government. 525 

countries would probably stand in the reverse order. 

There is no evidence that municipalizing so many 
things has done any harm to the character of the 
people, but it is early yet to judge. 

Now as to the second objection — the temptation to 
corruption and tyranny. It is hard to tell what experi- 
ence shows. As a matter of fact, in Great Britain and 
^ith^oo'dlocar^ Germany, where they have probably the 
government. bcst local govcmments, there is most 

municipalization; and in America, where we have 
unquestionably the worst local governments, there is 
leavSt municipalization. 

Regarding the third objection, Professor Meyer's con- 
clusions and the others given in the same connection, 
will be remembered, and there seems to be nothing to 
controvert them. 

The English experience seemed all one way, up to 
the late nineties, when, as we have seen (400 h), a great 
reaction set in which was overwhelming in the elections 
of 1906. Perhaps reaction may only be needed to cor- 
rect abuses incidental to new experience, and perhaps 
municipalization may progress all the more. 

But as between good government and municipaliza- 
tion, probably both are cause, and both effect. There 
do seem to be some faint indications (tho far from 
enough to prove anything) that the. more government 
has to do for the people, the more likely are the people 
to take care that it shall be done right (387, 389 /, 
392 c). 

As a matter of fact, there has recently been a great 
increase in the number of things done by government, 
and a widening of the field allowed to government by 
the restrictionist philosophers. 

While these two things have been increasing, there 
has been an increase in a third thing which may account 
for increase in the first two — the art of government has, 
on the whole, been growing. The conclusion, then, 
would seem to be that, as we have so often said before, 
what government can wisely attempt, depends on the 
government. The municipal governments of England 



526 The Promotion of Convenience. [§452 a 

can wisely do things that the municipal governments 
of the United States cannot; and those of the United 
States can wisely do things that those of Turkey cannot. 
453. Necessary If everybody needs a thing, that is no sign 
limits. that government should supply it when 

people can supply themselves. Everybody needs food, 
clothing and shelter : yet we have seen abundant reason 
why government should not supply them to those who 
can supply them.selves. 

It may be asked whether, if government were to supply 
them, and make people pay for them, the pauperization 
objection would come in; and whether, on the prin- 
ciple that the big industry cheapens product, govern- 
ment could not, by doing it all, do it enormously cheaper 
than it is done now. But the big industry does not 
Effective ^ccessarily cheapen product, unless it works 
industry /equires Under Competition : only then will all poor 
competition. management be weeded out , and prices kept 

down. If favoritism appoints poor management under 
competition, it will be weeded out: because the best 
competitors v/ill inevitably drive the poorest out of 
business. That may be hard on the poorest com- 
petitors, but not as hard as it is on the whole community 
for them to stay in. 

We may grant, then, that universal demand for 
a thing that can be supplied by competition, is not a 
reason why government should supply it, even if the 
consumers pay for it. But regarding things that 
cannot be supplied under competition — the natural 
monopolies, the argument is entirely different. Tho 
_„ , „ . , the government would not have competi- 

453 rfc;, Mainly ^- ^, -• i , i ^ j 

determined by tiou to Stimulate good management and 
natural monopoly, cheapness , private control would not either ; 
and private control would have more inducement to 
keep prices up : therefore there seems a chance that 
an ideal government, when attained, might manage as 
well as private control, and would supply more cheaply. 
But even the ideal government should charge, because, 
as not everybody needs the product of all the natural 
monopolies, people should pay in proportion to what 



§ 453 ^] ^^^ Sphere of Government. 527 

they use; and they can only do that direct, not in 
the way of taxes. Yet people do not pay only as they 
use them, for roads, bridges, streets and street lights, 
museums and parks. But they do pay as used, for most 
ferries, some bridges, postage, car-fare, water and 
domestic gas and electricity. 

453 re;. Tax for They pretty often pay for water in the 
commodities uni- yisly of taxcs, but there is a reason why 

uersally used, ,11 iir 11 -, ■ . rry, -^ 

charge fof others thcy should: lor everybody uccds it. Tho 
as used. they do not pay for each gallon when de- 

livered, as they do for each postage-stamp: in a great 
many places they do not even pay by meter; but 
where they do not, they generally pay by the number 
of outlets, or the size of buildings, or some other pro- 
portional adjustment. 

There is much agitation for providing not only water 
but many other things — even street-railway fares, and 
for that matter, steam-railway fares, free to everybody. 
It begins with agitation for low fares, and then grows 
to demand for free transit for "Labor" to and from 
work ; and so becomes really of the same piece with the 
agitation for making lunches and clothing free to school 
children, and in fact, everything free to everybody. 
Nothing could be more desirable, if there were any 
way of producing things without material, plant and 
labor; but there seems no way of getting them free. 
Yet the non-taxpayer, of course, wants to increase 
the cheap things and the free things provided by 
government, and cares nothing for the taxes necessary 
to do it. 

There is no fatal objection to government supplying 
"free", matters of natural monopoly, that virtually 
everybody uses, like roads, streets and street lights, 
and a few other natural monopolies, like some bridges, 
which, tho many people use seldom, are of the greatest 
importance when needed, and wdiich could not pay for 
the expense and trouble of collecting fares. Govern- 
ment should also care for, and collect for the use of, 
important natural monopolies which are of frequent, 
tho not universal use. This, of course, provided the 



528 The Promotion of Convenience. . [§ 453 c 

state of politics will enable government to manage them 
without undue corruption. 

454. The funda- ^^l^^ whole question is whether the people 
mental question. have the political capacity to secure the 
profits of monopoly facihties for themselves, and use 
more of the profits than private owners are apt to, for 
keeping the facilities up to the mark. 

As to whether this has yet been done anywhere, the 
testimony, as we have seen, is quite conflicting; but 
there is little conflict in the testimony that it has not 
been done under universal suffrage; and the weight of 
testimony seems almost equally strong that on the whole 
it has been best done in Germany, where the municipal 
suffrage is most in the hands of the ablest people (426 c). 
But in Germany, while the street-railway fares, for in- 
stance, are often but from a third to a half of ours, with 
a commutation system besides, generally deficits have 
had to be made up from the taxes. But people must 
pay for things or be pauperized; and where there is not 
a natural monopoly to make competition diflicult, they 
would get them better and cheaper under private com- 
petition than from government. So far as government 

455. Government flight try to Supply them, just so far the 
service outside of stimulus of competition which has evolved 
i'^i'Jig'to plotle^"""^'" civihzation, would be withdrawn, the essen- 
and officers. ^{q\ features of civilization would begin to 
disappear, and we would start back toward a condition 
of status and savagery. 

To sum up our summary : there appears to be a plain 
line where the best government must ultimately stop — 
just where it will interfere with private competition and 
the rewards of Ability, both of which stimulate Ability 
to provide goods and facilities in greater variety, reli- 
ability and cheapness than political management could. 
And it is most important to remember our oft-repeated 
lesson that the more power government officers have to 
do things for the people, the more power they have to 
do things for themselves; and in any civilization yet 
evolved, officials are apt to use such powers for their 
own profit, and to the robbery of the people. 



BOOK III. 

TAXATION. 
CHAPTER XXXVI. 

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON TAXATION. 

A fundamental essential to both general functions- of 
government — ^protecting rights and (with due caution) 
promoting convenience, still remains for us to con- 
sider. It is raising the money to pay expenses. 
456. Taxes not the Taxes are not the government's only 
only source of means oi sccurmg money. But they are 
revenue. ^^^ only oncs we can consider in detail. 

In addition to them, a little of its income comes (I) from 
sales — of public land for instance, or of monopolized 
products — like tobacco in France and Italy, tho that 
is really a form of taxation; (II) from fines: in bar- 
barous times and places this is an important and much- 
abused source of revenue; (III) from fees of sundry 
officers, and (IV) from assessments laid on property 
for neighboring improvements, such as streets, sewers, 
parks, etc. But, these all amount to little compared 
with the revenue from taxation. 

Tho raising revenue is of course merely incidental 
to the main functions of government, we are by no 
means to conclude that it is less important than the 
others. It does more to make history than any other: 

529 



53© Taxation. [§457 

. questions of taxation have probably done 
importance of more to cause civil wars and to overthrow 

the subject. empires, than all other agencies com- 

bined. A few instances among many are the wars in 
England under the Stuarts (tho it is a frequent mis- 
take to attribute them mainly to religious differences), 
our war of separation from England, and the French 
revolution. That revolution overthrew the French 
monarchy, 9.nd bad taxation rotted out the Roman 
empire. Even to our own civil war of 1 86 1-5 the 
question of "protection" contributed not a little. 

And yet young people generally regard questions of 
taxation as dry and uninteresting, probably because 
they have never felt the shoe pinch themselves: they 
do not realize that they are themselves paying many 
taxes in enhanced prices of the things that they buy 
.with their pocket-money or allowances, and that those 
sums are probably less than they would be if it were 
not for the taxes paid by the persons supplying them. 
Still less do young people realize, if they are restricted 
in their amusements, or even in their food and clothes, 
that taxation has anything to do with it. What 
taxation has to do with it, is just what we are going to 
wade through many pages to explain. It cannot be 
put in a sentence. 

It is plain enough that one cannot spend in amuse- 
ments, food and clothing, what is spent in taxes; but 
it is not so plain, tho it is as true, that a very large 
part of what is spent in taxes, especially in the United 
States — more especially here than in England, France 
or Germany — might just as well be spent in amuse- 
ments, food and clothing, and the government be all 
the better for it. I hope that is paradoxical enough 
to arouse a curiosity that may help us in our "many 
pages". 

Now what makes taxation so important ? Many men 
458. Everybody never have occasion for government's pro- 
pays taxes. tection from violence or robbery, but sub- 

stantially every man is taxed, whether he knows it or 



§ 460] General Considerations. 531 

not. Taxation takes, on an average, one twelfth of 
the earnings of each American citizen, and this even 
if he owns no property to be taxed. He is taxed 
if he eats sugar or wears wool: they are taxed, and 
he has to pay more for them on that account. The 
same is true, directly or indirectly, of most other 
things that he uses — some authorities think of every- 
thing that he uses, tho he does not pay on one thing 
in a thousand directly to the tax-collector; in fact, 
comparatively few men ever pay taxes directly at all. 
Yet, as we shall see more fully later, it would be a 
great stimulus to good citizenship if everybody did: 
for then everybody would realize the interest that he 
has in economical government— would have that very 
realization whose general absence from the young 
student has been deplored. We will look later into 
the question of how taxes are shifted from the man 
v/ho. first pays them, on to others. 

459. Rates in The American pays about eight and a 
different countries, j^alf per Cent, of his income in taxes; the 
Belgian a little over six; the Englishman about seven 
and three quarters ; but the Frenchman, with his big 
standing army, eleven; and the Italian lately, with his 
wasteful colonial fighting and domestic discords and 
scandals, fifteen or sixteen. This estimate includes all 
taxation — local, state and national. In even dollars, 
Mulhall says, the American has lately paid about 15; 
the German, 17; the Frenchman, 20; the Briton, 29; 
the Australian, 32; and the New-Zealander, 45. The 
last three are spending enormously on municipal opera- 
tion. For national taxation, Mr. Atkinson estimates 
(''Facts and Figures," 1904) that the American pays 
about $6.50 per person, while Great Britain, France, 
Germany and the Netherlands pay from $12 to |i8. 

460. Methods Of course the way taxes are collected 
influence rate largely determines the expenses of collec- 
tion. The difference in the systems of taxation prob- 
ably makes more than the differences of percentage of 



532 Taxation. [§ 460 

income taken, against us as compared with Belgium 
and England: for with our ordinary small military 
expenses (omitting the pension scandal and the Span- 
ish and Philippine difficulties) and our colossal re- 
sources, a wise system of taxation ought to make 
our rate far the lightest in the world. 

Aside from the system of taxation affecting the rate, 
it affects general well-being in other ways, almost with- 
460 r«;. andmor- ^ut limit. A bad tax system is a power- 
aiity, prosperity, ful foc of popular morality — some people 

peace, stable gov- , -, • i , i , r i tt- t 

ernment, and even thmk the mOSt pOWCriul. YoU CaU taX 

health and life, flood or pcstilcnce into a community, or 
you can tax them away. You can tax an industry out 
of existence, and throw the workmen into idleness and 
want; on the other hand, you can, in a sense, tax an 
industry into existence — by taxing a competing industry 
out. How taxes can make and unmake industries, 
produce revolutions, and rot empires, is perhaps fairly 
plain, but that remark about flood and pestilence may 
need explanation. There was once a tax on quinine 
that limited its use by the poor; and our high tariff 
has kept out Canadian lumber to a degree that is 
stripping woods from many places where they are 
needed to prevent the snow from melting too fast in 
Spring, and flooding the rivers. Raising the revenue 
from improper sources has brought these evils upon us, 
and raising it from proper sources would tax the evils 
away. 

Taxation affects morality by tempting people into 
dishonest and even violent practices to avoid it. That 
is not simply an objection to all taxation. As we shall 
see, some forms of taxation tempt to dishonesty much 
more than others. Adam Smith says that bad tax- 
laws "tempt persons to violate [them] who are fre- 
quently incapable of violating those of natural justice, 
and who would have been in every respect excellent 
citizens, had not those laws made that a crime which 
Nature never meant to be so". 

Taxes affect the movements of Capital and Ability. 



§ 462] General Considerations. 533 

If you happen to be a socialist or a communist or 
460r6;.a«rfmo.e- populist, or any other sort of an "ist" 
merits of_ Capital opposcd to accumulations of Capital or 
"^^' the leadership of Ability, you can (if you 

have your own way) tax them away from any com- 
munity. On the other hand, if you are so little of 
that sort of a ''friend of humanity" that you think 
Capital and Ability good things to have, you can 
attract them to your state by tax-laws wiser than 
those of other states. To attract Capital and Ability 
permanently, laws must be wise: because the attempt 
to attract them by unwisely favoring them at the 
expense of the poor and stupid, will be certain, in the 
long run, under free institutions, to awaken reactions, 
like those in the granger states in the last decade of 
the nineteenth centur}^, which drove Capital and 
leadership awav, and left people starving for lack of 
them. 

461. Taxation and The money for government expenses 
civilization. j^as by no means always come out of the 
people. The primitive idea generally was to get as 
much as possible out of the stranger, and that idea is 
not quite dead yet. The great nations of antiquity 
paid a considerable share of their expenses from plun- 
dered provinces; Arab tribes from time immemorial 
have levied tribute on caravans ; the robber barons of 
Germany taxed the traveler; even down to Spain and 
Cuba, not to speak of the United States, Porto Rico and 
the Philippines, nations have milked their colonies; 
and one of the arguments of high -tariff advocates to-day 
(tho a disputed one) , is that the stranger pays the tax. 

When tax-money cannot be got from the stranger, 
but must come out of the people, the best method of 
raising it depends, like all other questions of government, 
upon the character of the people. The most intelligent 
knowledge comes from comparison. With a primitive 

462, Opposite people, in places like early Russia or 
metiiodsiiiustrated. Turkey, an approved way has been simply 



534 Taxation. [§ 462 

to tell each man his share, being sure to make it big 
enough, then to get three or four prominent delinquent 
taxpayers, jab a sharp pole upward through the body 
of each, and plant them in a row where every one 
is sure to see them. Such an evidence of the prompt- 
ness and thoroughness of the government, inspires a 
confidence among the people that brings in the taxes 
with great success. 

While that seems a very simple way, it might not be 
a good one in America, tho it really would be less painful 
in the long run than some of the present ways. But 
the people fail to realize that fact, and would be apt 
to embarrass the collectors. 

The national government's settled way, up to the 
war with Spain, and the way that we are rapidly 
returning to, as the war is becoming paid for, was just 
at the opposite extreme from the Turkish. Instead of 
impressing the matter unpleasantly on the people's atten- 
tion, it was to try to collect the taxes without people 
generally knowing anything about it — to make taxation 
unobserved, 

" Like the bat of Indian brakes 
Whose pinions fan the wound it makes." 

There is good authority for that plan. The great 
Colbert said that the true way was to tax so as to 
pluck the most feathers with the least squealing. 

463. Direct and The names given to the system which 

indirect taxes. attempts to tell each citizen clearly just 
what he is to pay, and to the system which tries to get 
it out of him without his knowing it, are Direct and 
Indirect. ' 

Direct taxes are those which are paid in the first 
instance by the person getting the benefit of the thing 
taxed — such as those on real estate, accumulated 
property, income, inheritances and business transactions, 
including some of the stamp -taxes. 

Indirect taxes are those paid on property which the 



§ 463] General Considerations. 535 

payer does not ordinarily expect to use, but to sell, 
and whose taxes he is expected to add in the price 
to the consumer. These also include many stamp - 
taxes. 

The person on whom a direct tax is laid, has no 
choice about paying it. He must pay or be sold out. 

Sometimes indirect taxes need not be paid before the 
goods are sold, the goods meanwhile being left "in bond " 
under government control ; and nearly always the con- 
sumer of the articles taxed, who generally has to pay 
the indirect taxes in the price of the articles, can do 
without the articles if he sees fit, or substitute some- 
thing not taxed, unless everything he must have is 
taxed. But even then, he can do without taxed 
luxuries, if he sees fit. 

Not every tax falls into one of these categories and 
not into the other, any more definitely than things 
generally fall exclusively into any classes that human 
ingenuity tries to put them into. In fact, so little can 
a legislator foretell whether some taxes are going to 
prove direct or indirect, that some writers, especially 
on the continent of Europe, make different definitions, 
and some there, and even here, propose that the terms 
shall be abandoned. We have not space to go into that ; 
we may as well stick to the definition we have started on, 
and try to understand its weak points as well as its 
strong ones. To illustrate: when a man lives in a large 
house, the tax he pays on it is direct, of course. But 

then suppose he takes boarders, of course he has to 
charge part of his tax to them ; and the part paid through 
him by the boarders is indirect. He rents his whole 

house to somebody else. Of course he has to get 
interest, and taxes besides. The tax then has become 
entirely indirect, if his tenant really pays it, as in effect 
he probably does, tho there is a little doubt on that 
subject, which we will touch on later. Now a man 
imports a thousand cigars, expecting to charge to 
customers the duty imposed by the tariff, that tax is 
plainly indirect. But a traveler brings a thousand 

cigars which he expects to smoke and give to his friends ; 



536 Taxation. [§463 

the duty he pays is of course direct. A man distils 
a barrel of whiskey and pays the excise tax, which he 
charges to his customer; the tax is indirect. He con- 
cludes not to sell the barrel, but puts it in his own 
cellar; the tax is direct, of course. A druggist puts 
an eighth-of-a-cent stamp on a bottle of medicine; the 
tax is indirect if he charges his customer; but as he 
cannot well charge an eighth of a cent, the tax is 
probably direct. If it is a two-cent stamp, he prob- 
ably charges it, and the tax is indirect. He puts a 
two-cent stamp on a bank check. The tax is direct. 

464. Shifting ^^ have at least seen that sometimes a 

of taxes. "tax that seems direct can be shifted on to 

somebody else, and that he sometimes has to pay for it 
in increased proportions, as for scamped work (228 h) or 
for cheap money (361) or for the maintenance of idle 
prisoners (444 e). Now how do we determine whether 
a tax is going to be paid by the person on whom it 
is first laid, or passed on to somebody else? In the 
same way (and with perhaps about the same cer- 
tainty, in the present state of our knowledge) that 
we foretell storms — by studying the subject. It is 
simply a question of motion and friction. M. Thiers 
likened the diffusion of taxation to the diffusion of 
light, but he forgot that light is not subject to friction: 
the motion of taxation is: for tho the first man will 
pass it on if he can, the later men will prevent him if 
they can. S metimes one side will win, and sometimes 
the other. Sometimes the payment will be shared more 
or less along the line: for instance, the drug manufac- 
turers did not pay for stamps for the Spanish-war tax 
upon such patent medicines as were in the dealers' hands 
when the tax was imposed: the dealers put them on, 
and sometimes charged them to their customers, and 
sometimes did not. 

Generally speaking, whether the person on whom a 
tax is first laid, will be apt to pay it rather than shift 
it, is really a question of whether it is going to cost 
the producer or the middlemen more than the tax is 



§464<^] General Considerations. 537 

worth, to make the consumer pay it. There is the 
natural tendency for the man who first pays it, to 
shove it on to the next man, and so on to the con- 
sumer; but generally the producer, or even the dealer, 
will pay the tax rather than advance price so as to 
curtail his market to a degree that will more than offset 
the tax. This is especially the case where, as in patent 
medicines, for instance, there is a usual retail price. 

There is a broader distinction still, as to which in- 
direct taxes will be shifted. Those that consumers 
are most apt to pay, are of course, other things even, 
those most apt to be shifted; and those which con- 
sumers are most apt to pay', are those on things which 
everybody fnust have, like matches; and those on 
things which the rich will have, like champagne. 

When the producer or importer really pays the tax 
and passes it forward, as it were, through the whole- 
saler and the retailer to the consumer, all those pecple 
naturally try to get a profit for handling it. But com- 
petition sometimes leads them to pay the tax itself, 
instead of throwing it upon the consumer. Yet generally 
before the tax was imposed, competition has brought 
the less able producers' profits as low as they are apt 
to remain: so they contain no margin to pay a tax. 
But even then, the able producers with large margins 
of profit, may sometimes pay the tax, which will of 
course drive the less able producers, who cannot pay 
it, out of business. 

^<^^(a). Need of Obviously, everybody ought to be free 
free competition, -^q compctc by paying a tax if he wants 
to, rather than shift it to his customer. This is vir- 
tually part of the fact that all should be able to 
compete in prices, both for their own sake and the 
public's. . One very important principle of taxation 
springs from this fact — that all competitors should be 
taxed alike. For instance, as linen and cotton compete, 
it is unfair to tax linen unless you tax cotton, or cotton 
unless you tax linen ; so it is unfair to tax serges unless 
you tax cheviots, goatskins unless you tax calfskins; 
horses unless mules, railroads unless steamboats, rye un- 



538 Taxation. [§464(3 

less oats, and so on through all competing things. Yet 
it is impossible to do this fairly: each thing is com- 
peted with by too many others — more than a tax- 
law can follow: therefore taxation should be, as far as 
practicable, restricted to the things least subject to 
competition, like real estate and franchises. This fact 
regarding real estate and franchises is very important, 
for additional reasons which will appear later. 

It seems generally taken for granted that taxes ought 
to distribute themselves throughout the community, 
and it has been declared that they will so distribute 
themselves, until they are finally paid by the consumer. 
But it has also been declared that they will all finally 
find their way back to the land, because everything 
has its origin there. In fact, pretty much every con- 
ceivable shifting has been declared and denied. The 
truth is that the subject is so enormously complicated 
that we do not yet really know much about it. There 
is a widespread feeling, however, that a given amount 
of taxes, like a bump or a blow, does less harm the more 
widely (and therefore thinly) a given amount of con- 
cussion can be spread; and, as we shall see, it is certain 
that almost any tax is spread more widely than at first 
appears. A good general proof of this, is that, other 
^^^ ,^, o . things even, in any given civilized nation, 

464 r6;. Prices & . ' "^ ^ i-^- n 

highest where the priccs 01 commoditics are generally 
taxes are highest. ^:^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^es are highest— higher in 

small cities than in the country, and in large cities than 
in small ones. These higher prices of commodities 
represent the cost of the streets, lights, etc., which 
make the commodities easy of access (and therefore 
justify keeping a large variety), and, alas! they also 
represent the cost of the political corruption which 
gathers around municipal work. 

A melancholy proof of this last point, Americans 
must own up to: New York is probably the most 
expensive city in the world, and our other cities, in 
proportion to their sizes, generally follow pretty close 
on its heels. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

INDIRECT TAXES. 

Now to come to the details of the taxes levied by 
our benevolent national government in the manner of 
our amiable friend the vampire. The principal ones 
465 Excise ^^^ taxes on articles manufactured here, 

which are called excise; and taxes on 
imported commodities, called duties, the whole list of 
duties being called the tariff. 

An illustration of excise is in the fact that Scotch 
whiskey smells of smoke. Long ago the British govern- 
ment put a heavy excise tax on the manufacture of 
whiskey, and so it sold for a very high price. This led 
many people into making it secretly, so as to get the 
high price without paying the excise. Many of these 
secret stills were in the mountains of Scotland, and 
Ireland too ; and to prevent the smoke from betraying 
them to the excise officers, it had to be shut in and con- 
densed on the premises, and some of it used to get into 
the whiskey. But smoky whiskey is made by well- 
known distillers now, because some people got to like 
it, and it was found that creosote, which is a name for 
condensed smoke, has some good medicinal qualities. 
Since the civil-war tax was put on whiskey, there have 
been some secret mountain stills in the mountains of 
Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. There are 
some even now, and even in New York City now. 

Government thinks it worth while to collect taxes on 
such little stills as could be hid in the mountains, 
because if they did not, such stills would be sure to 

539 



540 Taxation. [§ 465 

increase in size and in numbers, and sell at low prices, 
so as to make it impossible for the lowland stills, which 
pay the taxes, to continue doing so. It has been more 
troublesome to collect taxes from the little stills than 
from the big ones — not only to find the little stills, but 
to collect the taxes. The distillers have often murdered 
the excisemen. 

Now in such cases, it might be fair to suppose that 
if the lawless people were not resisting the tax-gatherer, 
they would be trying to make money in some other 
way just as bad. But nevertheless if taxes were ar- 
ranged so that people could not make money by evad- 
ing them, there would be one less temptation to evil- 
doing. 

Excises are by no means laid on the liquor traffic 
alone. They are generally laid on tobacco the world 
over. During our civil war they were laid on almost 
all kinds of production, and even during the Spanish 
war they were restored on many drugs, and on perfumes 
and chewing-gum. 

They are burdensome on industry and commerce. 
Moreover, they are constantly tempting manufacturers 
to misrepresent to the tax-collector the value of the 
goods they handle, and evade the taxes, at the expense 
of those honest enough to pay them. For these rea- 
sons they were taken off from nearly everything but 
liquors and tobacco as soon as possible after the civil 
war and the Spanish war. Yet it would not do to 
conclude, from the objection to these taxes, that such 
taxes ought never to be levied. There is likely to be 
some good in methods that have been used so often. 
It is the amount of the tax that leads to the misrep- 
resentation, smuggling and outlawry. Such taxes are 
harmless in those respects when not large enough 
to make it very profitable to evade them. 
>icR/«. Tn^^.^n.. Excises have even a good side, so far 

465 ra;. Taxes may j_ rn -j.^ • 

limit dangerous as thcy keep the liquor tramc witnm 
pursm s. bounds ; and tariffs have, so far as they 

prevent illegitimate foreign competition. Excises have 
probably done more good in regulating the liquor traffic 



§ 466 a] Indirect Taxes. 541 

than they have done harm in leading ■ to ilhcit dis- 
tiUing. The trouble in handling the liquor traffic has 
only come from going to extremes, and disregarding 
the facts of human nature. When the excise on manu- 
facturing has been reasonable, it has been collected 
without trouble — that, in fact, is the test of its being 
reasonable; and on saloons, it has also been possible 
to collect license taxes high enough to limit the num- 
ber, and prevent temptation being offered to the weak 
at every turn. 

There are taxes besides those on distilling, that lead 
_„ ^ . to outlawry and murder. Duties have 

466. Duties. j -^1 r 1 

made smugglers, many of whom were 
ready for any crime; and where, as is often the case, 
the boundaries between countries have been mountains, 
it has been easy for the smugglers to live there and hide. 
They have grown very wild and lawless, and besides 
smuggling, have often run illicit stills. 

Yet duties have done a great deal of good to offset 
this evil. By increasing the expense of foreign goods, 
466 ra;. Encoumge they enable the domestic producer to com- 

home production. pg^g ^^^^ ^.J^g^ ^q^q SUCCCSSfully. That 

is well for the producer, and sometimes for the con- 
sumer. While he has a right to buy in the cheapest 
market, the home market, when its manufactures are 
fairly established, is naturally the cheapest for all 
goods adapted to the climate and resources of a 
country. 

In new countries, and sometimes in the new indus- 
tries of old countries, a tariff even on goods that can 
be produced cheaper at home, is often of the very 
greatest use . When , under either of these circumstances , 
an enterpriser is trying to establish an industry that 
already exists in another country, the foreigner, for 
the sake of keeping his monopoly, is very apt to sell 
even below what his goods cost him, just as we saw, 
when we were considering competition and trusts, 
that people often do in other situations (149 c). Then 
when he has prevented the success of the new industry, 



542 Taxation. [§ 466 a 

of course he can return to high prices, and is apt to get 
unfairly high ones. 

But when the foreigner makes prices unfair, tho the 
home producer may be able to compete with him, he 
will not want to, if he can keep the tariff high enough 
to shut out the foreign goods, or make the prices of them* 
higher than his own. In this case the consumer loses the 
benefit of competition. 

There is often another consideration besides the 
establishment of young industries, making a high tariff 
desirable. A nation is sometimes put to it as a measure 
466 rw. Tariff of sclf -defence — when another nation lays 
"'«''*• a high tariff on some important production 

of the first nation, and seriously disturbs existing indus- 
try, especially when such a step is taken, as it too 
often is, from mere spite and desire to injure. Then a 
tariff simply becomes a weapon of war, offensive or 
defensive. The "reciprocity treaties" that have been 
talked about as if they were great inventions, are sim- 
ply treaties of peace. A notable instance of "tariff 
war" arose when, some years ago, the Italians levied 
a very high duty on French wines, V\rhich had previously 
enjoyed in Italy a large market, that of course now 
suffered seriously. In the hope of forcing the Italians 
to open the market again, the French levied a corre- 
sponding duty on Italian silk; this led to a retaliation 
on the other side, until it all resulted in great suffering 
to both parties, and little good, if any, to either. A 
treaty has at last been made which restores industrial 
peace. Altho the Italian wine-maker and the French 
silk-maker each could get prices higher by just so 
much as the tariff limited foreign competition, each 
had to get the prices out of his own people: so the 
country could not be benefited; and moreover, the 
rise in prices limited the dealer's sales and the con- 
sumer's enjoyments. He is the one always neglected 
in artificial finance, either in taxation or scamping or 
labor restriction. 

France seems about to put a prohibitive duty on 
cottonseed-oil — an American industry absorbing more 



i 



§ 466 c] Indirect Taxes. 543 

than $50,000,000 yearly. Italy is considering the same 
step, and Austria has already taken it. American pro- 
tectionists are threatening a retaliation against French 
red wines. Thus there seems a prospect of two noses 
being cut off to spite two faces, and the two more men- 
tioned (not to speak of others) are already gone. That 
our commerce would breathe more freely with all the 
noses in place, is counter to protectionist doctrine. 

Because Russia exempts from excise, such of her beet- 
sugar as is exported, we, under the Dingley Act, put 
an equivalent duty on it. So used had we become to 
performing such acts of aggression ourselves without 
eliciting a murmur from the victims, that we were 
quite astounded when Russia put a prohibitory duty on 
our sugar. She was our best customer for it, taking 
$10,000,000 a year while we imported less than $25,000 
worth of the sugar for which we struck her. 

Beginning with our civil-war tariffs, our hand has 
been against every man, and every man is at last pre- 
paring for defence. So far have our aggressions gone, 
that at last there is talk of a European tariff league 
against us, and, league or no league, the effects of one 
are rapidly being wrought. 

France has already put a protective duty on our 
bacon. Germany has been on the point of making 
a tariff which must hurt us heavily, and at this 
writing commissioners are over there trying to find 
some way of continuing to eat our cake and have it. 
Other countries are preparing similar defences against 
us. 

The advocates of high tariffs claim that the foreigner 
pays the tax, and so he does, so far as he can afford it — 
._g The for- ^^ cases whcrc (first) adding the tax to the 
eigner- sometimes price would drive the imported goods from 
pays the tax. ^-^^ market, and (second) where the pro- 
ducer could not make up for the loss by gains in other 
markets; then he might bear a portion of the tax by 
reducing prices. But that the foreigner does not 
generally pay it, seems proved by the facts under every- 
body's eyes — that the prices of protected goods are 



544 Taxation. [§466^ 

high, and that the consumer actually does pay those 
prices. And it is plain that there is no "protection", 
unless it makes the imported goods high, and enables 
the domestic manufacturer to sell his competing goods 
high. 

The contrary statement has nevertheless deceived a 
good many people; but even if, after all, it is correct, 
how does it help France, to make Italy pay a lot of 
her taxes, if Italy makes France pay an equal lot of hers ? 

But suppose one country can get ahead of the other: 
so it could if it went in with an army and took the 
money. Either way would simply be a case of might 
making right. There is no more justification for the 
thing in morals than there is in common sense. 

466 (d). Early Yet no American can say that it is 

American • i . -i i r j ■ ^ 

experience. ncvcr right or scnsiblc tor a nation to 

take a step which may lead to a tariff war. When we 
were a British colony, and after, the efforts of British 
manufacturers to keep their monopolies here were 
merciless. Nobody here could begin making goods 
which the British competitors would not undersell at 
any loss. When the Revolution broke out, we were in 
the pitiful condition of being dependent on the enemy 
for nearly every manufactured article that we could 
not make in our own households — including, of course, 
the articles most needed to carry on the war. The war, 
of course, operated as a barrier to English competition, 
and our people made heroic efforts to do without such 
manufactured goods as they could not make themselves. 
The makeshifts of that time must have had a great 
deal to do with the development of Yankee ingenuity. 
466 re; From the After the war, Hamilton, the first Sec- 
Revoiuiion to the rctary of the Treasury, realizing that the 
cwii war. people must be slowly accustomed to tax- 

ation for national purposes, concealed his in a moder- 
ate tariff for revenue only. The English manufacturers, 
of course, tried to recover their monopolies. Our 
people were nearly all farmers, and naturally wanted 
their manufactured goods as cheap as possible; and 



§466/] Indirect Taxes. 545 

for the moment, cheap goods of course meant Enghsh 
goods. But distance put Enghsh goods at some dis- 
advantage, and inevitably some manufactures began 
to develop here; it was not until 181 6, however, that 
they became important enough to secure a protective 
tariff. Then a considerable one was put on, which 
was increased in 1824. But by 1832 people (espe- 
cially in the South, where there were no manufac- 
turers) began to realize that our manufacturers had 
grown strong enough to take care of themselves, and 
were making undue profits at the expense of men 
who were not manufacturers, by charging for domestic 
goods as high prices as the tariff made necessary for 
imported ones. Consequently, it was arranged that 
duties should gradually decrease until 1842. But by 
that time, the manufacturers had rallied enough sup- 
port to the doctrine of protection, to again increase the 
tariff, and it was kept moving up and down, as one 
party or the other got control, tho it never got very 
high until money was needed to carry on the civil war. 
466 (f). Sincethe During the civil war, the tariff was made 
civil war. vcry high solely for the sake of revenue. 

But after the war was over, and people with suffi- 
cient intelligence began to think that they would 
again like cheap goods and more goods that could 
not well be produced here, they found that during the 
war, powerful manufacturing interests had grown up 
under the tariff, and now were ready to do anything to 
retain their profits. All idea of protecting only indus- 
tries that needed it and could ultimately justify it, 
has been abandoned. There are fifteen hundred 
articles in the tariff, of which fourteen hundred yield 
no revenue at all, but only enable American manu- 
facturers to keep their prices at the tariff rate. Of the 
remaining hundred articles, only about twenty-five 
yield revenue enough to be worth keeping on the list. 
The most frightful corruption ever known in our poli- 
tics has been the result. Congress has been largely 
made up of the manufacturers themselves and their 
agents, and it is generally believed that the Senate 



546 Taxation. [§ 466 / 

itself was bought by the Sugar Trust in '94. Each indus- 
try has struggled for all the "protection" it could get, 
and has agreed to vote protection to other industries 
on condition of getting their votes in return. The 
high tariff made the revenues enormous, and then the 
manufacturers' party, rather than reduce the tariff, 
recklessly threw the revenues away, partly in waste- 
ful river and harbor improvements in localities where 
commerce did not justify them, but mainly in giving 
war-pensions to hosts of people who had no reasonable 
claim, to get their help to keep the dominant party in 
power. 

466 r^;. Indus- The war had kept manufacturing within 

trial effects. bounds, despite the war tariff; but when 

peace and prosperity returned, and even increase of 
the tariff with them, there was a wild rush into the 
protected industries. The country became glutted 
with manufactured goods that could not be sold. The 
great panic of '73 was attributed to this over-produc- 
tion. Meanwhile, although some manufactured goods 
necessarily fell in price, many agricultural products — 
notably wheat, remained as high as ever. The pro- 
tectionists, suffering from overdoses of their stimulant, 
cried, like the victim of alcohol, for more of it. The 
orgy reached its height in 1890, when the McKinley 
bill made an increase in the tariff so far beyond any 
rhyme or reason, that the people at last got their eyes 
open, and, in the election of '92, swept the tariff party 
from power. 

466 r/?;. Both But that by no means disposed of the 

parties corrupted, matter. The corruption then began to at- 
tack the Democratic party, which had not even the 
excuse of professed principle, for continuing the enor- 
mities. That party, as soon as in power, prepared, 
in the Wilson bill, a new tariff bringing the duties 
somewhere nearer reason; but, as already intimated, 
three of the party's senators refused to vote for it unless 
it gave protection to the Sugar Trust; other interests 
refused that protection unless they themselves were 
granted protection; and so the new party in power, 



§466i] Indirect Taxes. 547 

although it lowered some of the duties, failed to give 
the reform which it was elected to give. 

The Republicans, since their restoration by the 
election of '96, have not entirely restored the duties 
lowered by the Wilson bill. Their experience with the 
McKinley bill has kept them cautious. 

But as already said, a protective tariff is an act of 
aggression against the trade of other countries. It is 
wonderful how long and patiently our aggression of this 
kind against other manufacturing nations, has been 
borne. But they are at last turning against us, and 
the merited destruction of the system by reciprocity 
treaties or dual tariffs, is only a question of time, and 
probably not much time. 

Raw materials, as a rule, have advanced materially 
in price since about 1890, but manufactured goods, in 
which American ingenuity is a large factor, have shared 
little in the advance, and have in many cases declined. 
A notable instance is that hides are nearly fifty per cent, 
higher, while boots and shoes are a little lower. The 
conclusion is that with the tariff taken off to cheapen 
raw material on the one hand, and on the other to lead 
foreign markets to seek our manufactured goods in 
exchange for their own, our prosperity would be greatly 
promoted. And even now many manufacturers are 
selling in foreign markets at prices less than the tariff 
enables them to charge at home. In 1905, the congres- 
sional elections showed a large increase in the demand 
for free raw materials from manufacturers. 

/^eQ(i). Tariffs In the foregoing account, the term 

tend to expand, "manufacturers" has been generally used 
to indicate the supporters of the tariff, because they 
were the principal actors. But the fact is that when 
there is a tariff on manufactures, those not manu- 
facturers rush in for "protection" too. No matter how 
wise such a tariff at its inception, it not only stays 
after it becomes harmful, but always spreads till it 
does become harmful. Not only must the fanner's 
crops, and even his eggs, be ''protected", but the pure 



548 Taxation. [§ 466 i 

bounty of Nature in forests and mines, must be, until, 
as already stated, artificial prices, which everybody 
using wood must pay, sweep off the forests, and bring 
down the floods, while right across the Canadian border 
are endless forests that now answer no human need. 

466 (j). Pfotection A protective tariff is alleged to raise the 
and wages. wages of the laborer. It does so about 

as much as it does those of the hen when eggs are 
"protected". The laborer's employer, like the hen's 
owner, alone gets the benefit. This is proved by specfic 
facts abundantly cited already (95 a); and by the 
general fact that in the long run wages depend on ability, 
not on juggling statutes. And it is because of his ability, 
not because of the tariff, that the American mechanic's 
wages are the highest in the world. Moreover, a pro- 
tective tariff brings little new capital into the country 
(only in cases where it makes foreigners establish 
plants here) and the wages of labor of any given degree 
of ability are determined mainly by the amount of 
capital that enterprisers can use for wages, and the num- 
ber of men among whom the wages are divided. Note 
the expression : ' ' laborers of any given degree of ability ' ' . 
The higher the ability, the larger the share of capital 
ready to pay them, and the fewer the men to share it. 

Even if protection did increase wages, there is no 
question that it increases the prices of what the wages 
buy. But we always have with us that old folly of 
the wage-earner thinking only of what he gets, not of 
what he spends. 

Protection brings capital out of other pursuits into 
the protected manufactures; but it must also bring 
more laborers to divide it among, as the capital could 
not be used without labor. The tariff simply diverts 
money and labor from one pursuit to another. That 
indeed is one of the professed objects. The protec- 
tionist claims to improve on the distribution of labor 
indicated by blind and unaided Nature. 

It is claimed that the protected manufactures attract 
foreign labor. But it, is hard to see how that can 



§ 466 k] Indirect Taxes. 549 

increase American wages. Attracting foreign labor is 
just what protectionists claim that they do not want 
to do, and of course insist that they do not do. They 
have even put on such prohibitions to keep it out, that 
the law has had to settle whether a foreign musician or 
even a foreign clergyman could land on our hospitable 
shores, and while we complain of the inhospitable recep- 
tion of travelers by some savages, we put Chinamen in 
jail for no crime but being among us. 

When countries have raised their tariffs, there has 
been no lasting advance of wages not reasonably attribu- 
table to other causes, and when countries have lowered 
their tariffs, there has been no lasting decline of wages 
not attributable to other causes. The recent spurt of 
protectionism in France, Germany and Italy has made 
no sudden rise in the wages of mechanics; and under 
virtual free trade, English mechanics have had their 
proportion, and probably more, of the advance in wages 
general during the last half -century. 
466 W. Numbers But assuming for a moment that pro- 
concerned. tcctiou does benefit all engaged in the pro- 

tected industries, and that it does not do so at the expense 
of the community ; it is still worth while to consider what 
portion of the population of the United States is bene- 
fited by protected industry. Under the census of 1900, 
there were but a little over six per cent.* of the people 

* There were about 29,000,000 engaged in gainful occupations. 
Of these about 22,000,000 were included in agriculture, fisheries, 
mining, professional and personal service, trade and transpor- 
tation. Of the remaining 7,000,000, about 1,800,000 were 
blacksmiths, butchers, builders and heavy lumber workers, with 
whom of course there can be no foreign competition, and of the 
remaining 5,200,000, less than one third were in pursuits really 
open to foreign competition. But as there was only about a 
third of the population at work, it is fair to presume that tho but 
about one third of the 5,200,000 workers, as above, were affected 
by the tariff, each of them had two others — women or children 
or old people, dependent upon him: so industries supporting 
about 5,200,000 were affected by the tariff, or a little over six per 
cent, of the whole population. In preceding editions of this 
book, the non- working dependents were not taken into the 
calculation, and it was based on the census of 1890. The two 



550 



Taxation . [§466^ 



at work in the United States, who were directly affected 
by the tariff, while the remaining ninety-four per cent, 
of the people were paying prices enhanced by the tariff 
on the immense product turned out through machinery 
by the six per cent. 

Mr. Atkinson says that of 29,000,000 at work, only 
1,000,000 are directly affected by the tariff. 

I have said "the remaining ninety -four per cent", 
but that does not tell the whole story: the six per 
cent, themselves have to pay enhanced prices for all 
the protected goods, even each mechanic for those he 
works on himself. 

The wages of the six per cent, are not any higher, 
other things even, than the wages of the ninety-four 
per cent. : so the profits resulting from the manufac- 
turer being able to get tariff prices, must partly go 
into the pockets of the enterprisers, and are partly 
wasted in the depreciated prices of manufactured goods 
that come with the occasional gluts which high tariffs 
always cause. Outside of monopolies, however, they 
are probably not as great as the advocates of the sys- 
tem claim. 

A s^lut is an excess of production beyond 

466 r/;. Gluts. 1 ,^ 1 ^ i A X, A. 

what people can consume, or beyond what 

they have other productions to exchange for (466 g). 
Nothing gluts an industry oftener than duties so high 
as to shut out foreign competition, and so not only to 
tempt too many people into producing a certain thing, 
but to draw people away from making the things that 
would exchange for it. As people sell and buy for 
money, they do not, at first sight, appear to exchange 
things with each other. But as we saw when we dis- 
cussed money, money is but a means of making the 

censuses show the proportions to be about the same. True, 
there are tariff rates on most articles produced by the farmer, 
fisherman and miner, but as those articles are often perishable, 
and generally cost more to bring from elsewhere than to produce 
here, there is virtually no foreign competition to * ' protect " those 
producers from. 



§466n] Indirect Taxes. 551 

exchanges quicker and easier. Nobody sells anything 
for money because the money itself is of any use to 
him: he only wants it to pay for other things. It is 
aptly called a ''ineditmi of exchange" — in the middle 
between the thing parted with and the thing acquired. 
But to go back, people get glutted goods cheaper 
than goods of which there are not too many; but 
they get them cheaper only after they have paid, at 
times when there were no gluts, more than the differ- 
ence, in prices enhanced by taxes — more than the differ- 
ence, because besides what they get back in low-priced 
goods, they have to pay the enterpriser's profits when 
he makes any profit — and he makes profits large and 
often, or he would not be standing the loss from occa- 
sional gluts, or making his enormous payments to 
the campaign funds of the party which keeps up the 
protective system. The consumers have to pay these 
campaign expenses in the long run, and have to pay 
duties on such foreign goods as the protective system 
leaves room for them to buy, with the expenses of col- 
lecting those duties, and probably in some instances 
with profits on those duties, and threefold profits at 
that — to the importer, the jobber and the retailer. We 
have seen how these attempts to make money by jug- 
glery succeed, in scamped work (228 b) and poor money 
(361) and idle prisoners (444^) and indirect taxes gen- 
erally (464). 

^QQ(m). Effect On trusts, the influence of a protective 

on trusts. tariff is very bad for the public interest. 

•It deprives the public of the benefit of competition 
between the foreigner and the trust. So if the trust 
covers the whole home production of a "protected" 
article, people's only control over its prices will be in 
doing without its products. Moreover, the labor trusts 
are just as eager for "protection" as the other trusts, 
and have obtained laws shutting out skilled and able 
immigrants whom the country as a whole greatly needs. 

466 rw;. Con- The conclusion, then, in regard to raising 

elusions. taxation by tariff duties, is that it is at 



552 Taxation. [§ 466 n 

bCvSt a weapon ; that in young countries it may be salu- 
tary as a weapon of self-defence; that in all countries, 
as a weapon of self-defence or even of industrial war, 
it may at times appear necessary, just as any other 
weapon sometimes may be; but that in a mature 
country at peace, it is most dangerous and pernicious. 

Our national government adheres to so 
&HcanTyttlm!' ^'ad a method, largely as a matter of 
course, from historic habit, as already 
indicated (466 e), but especially for two reasons: (I) 
because, as the national government has charge of all 
our relations with other nations, and as, consistently 
with that, the Constitution prohibits the separate states 
from levying duties on imports or exports, that field 
of taxation is left specially open to the national gov- 
ernment. And (II) the Constitution (Art. I, Sec. II) 
provides that "all direct taxes shall be apportioned 
among the several states according to their respective 
numbers". Now the value of property is not at all 
"according to their respective -numbers " : there are 
rich states and poor states having about the same 
population. Suppose two states equal in population, 
but one five times as rich as the other: then if govern- 
ment wanted to collect the same amount of direct tax 
from one as from the other, each man in the poor state 
would have to pay five per cent, of his property where 
each man in the rich state paid one per cent, of his. 
This makes it virtually impossible for the national 
government, under the Constitution, to impose some 
of the direct taxes so that people will submit to them, 
or ought to submit to them ; and therefore the govern- 
ment is driven to the indirect taxes. But these are 
really more just only so far, of course, as they are put 
on things that a man can comfortably do without if 
he pleases. 

466 (p). Expert ^^^ feeling that our national system is 

opinion on wrong, is stroug among substantially the 

American method, iii_i r j. ■ j xj j. c j.-\ 

whole body 01 tramed students 01 the 
subject, and their opinion is not less valuable than 



§ 467] Indirect Taxation. 553 

if they paid a heavier share of taxes : for taxes, especially 
indirect taxes, come proportionally hardest on people 
of moderate fortune, as we shall see more fully later, 
and they are quite apt to know best where the shoe 
pinches. 

The government has already imposed some direct 
taxes — such of the stamp-taxes as are direct, and the 
income-tax during the civil war, when people were 
ready to submit to almost anything to save the Union. 
But when the same thing was tried in 1894, the vSupreme 
Court decided that it was a direct tax, not "apportioned 
among the several states according to their respective 
numbers". 

^^^ „^ , It has been found desirable to insure 

467. Stamp -taxes. ,-, ^ x 1 ^- ^ ■ ^ 

the payment 01 duties and excises by 

something farther than the usual precautions in collect- 
ing the taxes. To many things — especially packages 
of tobacco and cigars, kegs of beer, bottles of wine and 
spirits, and packages of patent medicines, all of which 
are favorite subjects of duty and excise, it has been 
found well to affix stamps showing that the tax has 
been paid. Unstamped goods offered for sale can then 
be seized. 

Some things pay both tariff and excise : each box of 
imported cigars now bears a duty stamp and an excise 
stamp; and for some time after the Spanish war, each 
bottle of imported wine or spirits, after paying duty, 
bore an excise stamp also. 

As already said, some of the stamp -taxes are direct, 
and we are now discussing only indirect taxes, but 
there is not much to be said about stamp -taxes any- 
how, and we may as well have done with them here. 
They have been carried farther than as mere vouch- 
ers for indirect taxes on merchandise, where the buyer 
of the goods often pays for the stamps. Governments 
often sell stamps which have to be put on legal instru- 
ments and commercial papers, such as deeds, notes of 
hand, bank checks, telegrams, passenger-tickets, etc. 
This was done in America for the civil-war tax and the 



554 Taxation. [§467 

Spanisli-war tax ; and in most European countries is a 
permanent thing — mainly for armies in expectancy of 
war. 

Whether those stamp -taxes are direct 
inVi'idiyect/"'^"* ^^ indirect depends upon where the stamps 
are put. On checks and documents, usually 
they are direct, tho the telegraph and express com- 
panies have sometimes succeeded in shifting them to 
their customers. 

Now in this sense, whether a stamp -tax (outside of 
being a voucher for excise) is a good one, Americans 
think depends somewhat on who imposes it — as do 
the merits of all taxes, for that matter. It was per- 
haps the chief cause of our separating from Great 
Britain, but when we have imposed it ourselves during 
war, we have paid it cheerfully. 

It is a pretty good sort of tax in so far as it is pretty 
sure to be paid by most of those fairly subject to it, 
and very sure not to be paid by those who are not; 
but it yields comparatively little, is a daily bother to 
business men, and, of course, is somewhat in restraint 
of trade, and for that reason cannot well be pushed to 
A67(b) Often ^ vcry large amount. So (carefully re- 
mereiy'a petty mcmbering that we are not now consider- 
misance. -^^ stamps ou pccuHar merchandise, and 

on stock transactions, both of which directly trouble 
but comparatively few people, and the latter of which 
contain a large element of gambling) a stamp- tax is 
generally a pestiferous little nuisance,* which those 
who pay enough of it to be entitled to be heard, would 
rather pay double, in a lump sum, for the sake of get- 
ting rid of. 

It is then to be regarded as one of the taxes 
worth serious discussion, only as petty nuisances are 
worth serious discussion. It is not to be compared in 

* Mr. Dingley expected his new internal-revenue system, 
demised for the Spanish war, to yield about $210,000,000 an- 
nually. Of this, he expected only $15,000,000 to come from 
stamps on checks, telegrams and express receipts, which are 
bothering people at every turn. 



§ 467 b] Indirect Taxation. 555 

importance with the other taxes we have considered, 
and are to consider — especially for a rich and peaceful 
nation not obliged to exploit every possible source of 
revenue. 

The preceding paragraph was written in 1900. A 
sufficient comment on it is that virtually all of the 
stamp-taxes have since been repealed. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

INDIRECT TAXES (CONTINUED). 

General Conclusions. 
.„o , .. . . Indirect taxes, as now administered in 

468. Indirect taxes ,, tt •. i ov . n i 

expensive to pay the United btates, are generally much more 

and to collect. expensive to collect than direct ones. 
And as intermediate profits sometimes follow indirect 
taxes (464, 466 /), they are apt to be more expensive to 
pay, as well as to collect, than taxes which can be paid 
direct. 

As the United States taxes have been laid in recent 
years, collection of the excises costs about half as 
large a percentage of them, as collection of the duties. 

From 1870 to 1890 the tariff yielded more than the 
excises — about double. A few years later the results 
were reversed. 

468 ra;. Hard on] Indirect taxes are not gauged in pro- 
the poor. portion to people's ability to pay: as 

generally administered, they fall unduly upon the 
poor, and do vastly more than all the injustices in 
distributing the product of labor, toward making "the 
rich richer and the poor poorer", tho even they with 
all the other agencies, are not able to accomplish the 
result. To get enough out of such taxes to make them 
worth while, a large portion of them must be placed on 
the necessities in universal use. These absorb all a 
poor man's income, while most of a rich man's income 
goes in luxuries, and it is no privation for him to pay 
taxes on them; and moreover, the portion of his in- 

556 



§4686] Indirect Taxes. 557 

come which he does not spend,, indirect taxes cannot 
touch at all. This is an argument, as we shall see more 
clearly later (470^"), for taxing such portion of incomes 
as is not spent in necessities. 

Taxes are generally made very heavy on the rich 
man's luxuries (as, if there are indirect taxes at all, 
they ought to be), yet he has his choice whether to in- 
dulge in those luxuries or not, while the poor man has 
no choice whether he will use taxed necessities or not.. 
True, there is no excise on most things produced at 
home, but he cannot get along with those alone, and if 
he could, there is a tariff on nearly all the correspond- 
ing foreign productions — on drugs and sugar and 
woolens, for instance — for the avowed purpose of en- 
abling the American producer to charge that much 
more : so the poor man has to pay higher prices to the 
American manufacturer, in many cases where he does 
not pay the American government. 

468 W. stimulate Indirect taxes, then, are hard on the 
corrupt legislation, poor compared with the rich. And there 
is another social division apt to result from the mdirect 
system: Indirect taxes set off a portion of the com- 
munity with interests against the community as a 
whole: for they give manufacturers powerful induce- 
ments to influence legislation for their own benefit, at the 
expense of the rest of the community. 

As a peculiar advantage in resisting reform, such 
interested parties have the cry of "vested interests". 
When factories have grown up under a system of tariff 
and excise, even when changed circumstances make 
the system bad, the attempt to change it is naturally 
met by the cry that legislation ought to respect "vested 
interests ". So it ought, to a reasonable degree, especially 
in taxation. Some writers go so far as to say that a 
bad system is apt to be better than a good change. 
But the moral is that, as changes so upset industry, it 
is doubly important to make taxes so wisely that they 
will stand. 

Yet those directly interested in the tariff, do not 
always go on this principle. On the contrary, they are 



558 Taxation. ■- [§4686 

constantly changing it on speculation. Since 1862, the 
tariff has been changed some twenty-five times, all 
but once at the instance of some of the protectionists who ■ 
had " little games " of their own to play. 

468 re; Fail to Indirect taxation lessens the citizen's 

stimulate interest interest in good government. Under it, 
m governmen . ^j^^ citizcu cannot know what he is pay- 
ing to the government, or whether it is more or less this 
year than last. He has no plain direct experience, in his 
own person, of economy or extravagance in government, 
and therefore has only a hearsay interest in working 
for honest and competent government. 

The government of the United States has increased in 
cost to each citizen from $4.44 for the year 1884 to 
$7.14' for the year 1904. During both of Cleveland's 
terms, the cost was less than in the terms preceding 
and following his. If the taxes had been direct, is it 
likely that the people would have permitted such an 
increase? When, as in New York City, only one man 
in twenty-five pays any direct taxes, it is no wonder 
that the government is extravagant.* 



* Speaking on this subject in the House of Lords in i860, the 
Earl of Derby said that "by making the whole revenue of the 
United Kingdom depend upon direct taxation the pressure 
would be so odious that wars would be avoided, because no 
party would incur the odium of carrying them on". (Wells.) 

In England, the treasury gets but five sevenths of what 
consumers pay. Some good authorities put it as low as three 
fifths. In Prussia it costs four per cent, to collect direct taxes, 
and twelve per cent, for indirect. The Frenchman pays not 
only the tax, but one fifth of the cost of his goods is wasted 
on collection expenses and intermediate profits. But to find 
the extreme of this waste, we must come to the United States. 
In 1846 the Secretary of the Treasury estimated that the 
government got $27,000,000 from duties, while the people 
paid $44,000,000 in increased prices of the articles taxed. In 
'67-8, a leading authority in the New York Constitutional Con- 
vention, expressed the opinion that the consumers paid the 
dealers and manufacturers at least half as much again as the 
amount of the tax. About 1883, Mr. Springer stated in Con- 
gress, as the result of a careful examination, that during the 



§ 468 (i] Indirect Taxes. 559 

One feature of this consideration has been pointed 
out to me by Professor Trent. The novelty and pro- 
priety of the suggestion tend, did not his work in his 
later field prevent, to make one regret his abandonment 
of Economics. He points out that the indirect tax- 
payer has no such evidence to give him the standing 
in court that the direct taxpayer has, if he wishes to 
exercise his right to sue a public officer for misappro- 
priatioi^ of taxes. 

468 w. Why they Yct in spitc of all these objections to 
are popular. indirect taxes, they are popular with many 

people, and for the reason that we have many other 
governmental institutions — the weaknesses of human 
nature. Most men do not know anything about indirect 
taxes, but pay them without even knowing that they 
are paying taxes. Men do not pay most of their taxes 
at the government offices: they pay the indirect ones 
at places which they object less to going to — ^the gro- 
cer's and, too often, the bar-room. That is the main 
reason why they prefer indirect ones. Yet if wise 
statesmen were to take pity on them and give them 
the cheaper direct taxes, they would reciprocate by 
turning the wise statesmen out of office. There is not 
a community in the world with sense enough to pay all 
of its taxes directly. Colbert (462) realized that where 
taxation is concerned, men are generally geese, and wise 
statesmen treat them as such. 

All this indicates that the ways of collecting taxes, 
utterly irrespective of their amount, might make a 
great difference in the contentment and happiness of 
the people. Yet it is difficult to collect them In the 

twenty years preceding, the people of the United States had 
paid in consequence of indirect taxes, but over and above the 
taxes themselves, more than eleven billions of dollars, of which 
the government had not received a dollar. 

As one instance showing how much manufacturers have 
profited by systems of indirect taxation, in 1883 the match- 
manufacturers objected to the removal of a tax of one cent 
per package, and when the tax was removed in spite of them, 
the price fell a cent and a half a package. (Condensed from 
Wells.) 



560 Taxation. [§ 468 d 

ways that v*rill really hurt least in the long run. Taxing 
is a sort of surgical operation anyhow, and the way 
that really costs the patient least, may be the most 
painful for the moment. 

Taxes can be made easier if paid in instalments, rather 
than in lump sums, and the indirect tax is of that kind, 
but, as already said, it is the most expensive, tho the 
one the vast majority ot people most willingly pay. A 
few cents a pound when one buys tea and coffee, or a 
little increase in the cost of something that many men 
are ready to pay as high for as beer and whiskey, seems 
a small matter (especially as men generally do not stop 
to think about it at all) compared with what the same 
amount of taxes would seem if they and other indirect 
taxes were all presented in a lump sum, once a year, 
in, for instance, the shape of a government claim against 
a man's house. 

But as it is, there is a tax-claim against every man's 
house, if he has one, or against his landlord's if he 
has not. But that is just so much the more reason 
why, if that claim were increased by diminishing his 
indirect taxes, he would want to turn out the govern- 
ment increasing it, and bring in one that would appear 
to tax him less. And there is something more substan- 
tial than mere appearance in favor of the indirect S3/'S- 
tem, or a combination of the two: men with little fore- 
thought or little property (and the two are apt to mean 
nearly the same thing, and moreover, the vast majority 
of men are of that kind) would be sure to be found 
lacking the means to pay their taxes if all were pre- 
sented in one big bill, while they manage to pay them 
a trifle at a time, in increased prices of their purchases. 

Some claim that so far as people realize them, in- 
direct taxes do encourage saving, but that seems rather 
fine-spun. A considerable lump sum is a more effective 
argument than a charge of small -shot petty sums. Prob- 
ably nobody ever yet lessened his total expenditure on 
account of taxation — refused the thing he had the' 
money to pay for, because part of its price represented 



§468 e Indirect Taxation. 561 

a tax. If he could not afford it, the tax did not make 
him less apt to spend his money in something else, or 
more apt to put it in the bank. 

468 rej. Summary To sum up the case for and against in- 
for and against, direct taxcs .' they are apparently so easy to 
pay that it is quite probable that no country is yet 
civilized enough to get along without them. But prob- 
ably, as people grow wiser, such taxes will ultimately 
disappear,* because they keep the payers blind to the 
extravagances in government, are corrupting to people 
and rulers, and tho the paying is comparatively easily 
done, they are really the most expensive of all taxes 
to collect, and the hardest of all taxes on the poor. 

* From 1 84 1 to 1896, the proportion of the Imperial Revenue 
of Great Britain coming from indirect taxes, fell from 73 to 52 
per cent. This was accompanied by a great increase in the 
consumption of things used by the laboring classes. (Wells.) 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

INQUISITORIAL DIRECT TAXES. 

Income and Inheritance Taxes. 

469. Direct taxes ^^ ^°^^ '^'^^ ^° "^^^ taxes generally 
divided into Inquisi- called direct. There is one broad line of 
torial and Obvious, (distinction that we may as well follow in 
treating them: some of the objects are seen of all men, 
while others cannot be got at without prying into pri- 
vate affairs. 

If you have ever waited on an American dock (Euro- 
pean custom-houses are not half so bad) to have your 
baggage examined, you probably think that we have 
considered some of the prying taxes already. 

But, as remarked more than once, the human mind 
cannot often make any classification that does not 
overlap — probably because there are no hard-and-fast 
divisions in Nature. Probably we cannot do better than 
group the direct taxes into Inquisitorial and Obvious. 

Now to begin on the first group, and from a point we 
are already a little acquainted with: the promotion of 
saving is not the only good reason for taxing the 
things that enter into a man's consumption. There 
are a good many reasons why the rate at which a man 
is willing to spend on himself and his family, should be 
the rate at which he should spend for the general good. 
But the more a man must spend on his family, the less 
he can afford to pay in taxes. A way around has been 
found in the direct tax on luxuries that a man can 
do without — horses, carriages, billiard-tables, pianos, 

562 



§ 47° ^] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 563 

watches, jewelry, etc., etc. But on the other hand, 
watches, jewelry and many such things are easily 
concealed, the taxes are not only inquisitorial, easily 
lied about and expensive to collect, but they yield too 
little to justify a capable people in fooling with 
them. 

.^r, . . As we cannot, then, approve of many 

470. Income-tax. t .-, . ,^^ , ,, ■' 

01 the taxes on a man s outgo that we 

have so far considered, can we say anything better for 
a tax on his income ? It would be at least direct enough, 
and as it could not very readily distribute itself, we 
would at least know whom we were taxing. Moreover, 
the income-tax would avoid some injustices inherent 
in other taxes: a man would have to pay only on 
A70 (a). Falls only ^^^^ succcssful Operations, where he could 
on juccesses and afford to, and not on his failures. On the 
acuue property, q^-^qj- hand, a dealer has to pay duties 
and excises whether he makes a profit on the goods 
or not. 

Moreover, a man would have to pay only on property 
returning income — not on idle property. But not all 
people consider that a merit: the Henry George school 
thinks idle real estate the best possible object of taxa- 
tion, as tending to force the landlord to improve. That, 
however, is a frightfully stupid scheme, at least when 
put in so extreme a way: for the money to improve 
the real estate would have to come out of some other 
mode of production where it is probably more needed, 
as proved from the fact of its already being there. 
The scheme is simply one to rob Peter to pay Paul, like 
nearly every other scheme to affect industries by taxa- 
tion. We will consider this subject farther when we 
come to the taxation of real estate. 

Now it seems very desirable that each man should 
pay according to his ability to pay. All the authorities 
470 r6j and is ^^'^^^ ^^ that; and a man's actual income 
proportioned to each year, if he earns it himself, is probably 
ability. ^^^ l^^g^ ^^g^ ^£ j^-g g^i3^hty to pay ; and if he 

does not earn it himself, taxing it is probably the best 



564 Taxation [§4706 

way to secure liis contribution to the common good, 
as he makes none by producing. 

We seem, then, to have at last reached the ideal tax. 
But it is too ideal for this imperfect world. The assessors 
470 (c). Like all have to depend on the taxpayer's statement 
^a^'remZ'mm''^^" of ^^^ amouut of his income : they can never 
^ma- know the facts for themselves. So, as long 

as human nature remains as it is, there will never be an 
income-tax, any more than there will be a tariff- or excise- 
tax, which will not be a swindle of the taxpayer scrupulous 
enough to tell the whole truth, for the benefit of the 
taxpayer unscrupulous enough to conceal it. All these 
inquisitorial taxes — direct or indirect, that would pry 
into people's private affairs, put a premium on lying, 
and make the truth-teller pay the liar's taxes for him. 

There are at least two taxes that people cannot evade, 
but they can evade some easier than others — income- 
tax, inheritance-tax and personal-property tax easiest of 
all. 

Perhaps if dishonest men do not make a clean breast 
to the assessor regarding such matters, that should not 
prevent honest men from doing their duty. But very 
conscientious men might question, and, as a well-known 
fact, do seriously question, whether it is their duty 
to pay all the personal and income and inheritance 
taxes of the community, and let the rascals go scot-free. 
The result in practice is that, despite an occasional 
exception, men who scorn to evade any other obliga- 
tion, unhesitatingly evade the inquisitorial taxes. A 
striking illustration of this is nothing less than that, 
as Mr. Wells says, "a high court . . . has recently 
decided that 'perjury in connection with a man's tax- 
lists does not affect his general credibility under oath.'" 

The premium on roguery is certainly higher in an 
income-tax than in duties and excises, just as the 
income-tax represents the profits of a year, while a duty 
or an excise concerns but a single transaction, and lying 
is unquestionably easier regarding income. Stamps and 
customs inspections have made evasion very difficult 
regarding tariffs and excises* 



§47o/] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 565 

The public has no right to know a man's 
flg^htfo/irimTy. income : it would make it harder for the 
taxpayer to get through times of depres- 
sion, and send the leeches after him all the thicker in 
times of prosperity. People dealing with a man are 
entitled to know his claim to credit, in a general way; 
but it does not follow that the rest of the world is 
entitled to know: tho if they were perfectly wise and 
good — would not strike a man when he is down, and 
overcharge him when he is prosperous, there might 
be no objection to their knowing. But as the world is 
far from perfectly wise and good, considerable privacy 
is necessary to safety and comfort. 

Yet where the good of the state is concerned, the 
right of privacy must give way. Sometimes even the 
right to life has to. But opinions differ as to whether 
an income-tax, rather than some other taxes, is for the 
good of the state. This very invasion of privacy is 
one of the reasons why it is not. 

470 re;. Generally Taxing incomcs tends to double taxa- 
doubies taxation. ^{^^ q^^^ doublc taxation is even pro- 
hibited in some constitutions. If a man pays taxes on 
real estate, stock in trade, bonds, stocks, etc., and then 
pays again on the income they bring him, he certainly 
pays twice. 

470 rf; Asiiius- ^^ ^^ ^ standard question whether, if 
trating progressive peoplc will tax incomcs, they should bear 
taxation. ^^ hcavily on a little one as on a big one — 

tax it the same percentage. The arguments both ways 
are very strong. The strongest perhaps is that a man 
with ten thousand dollars can easier spare a given per- 
centage — say five per cent., having ninety-five hundred 
dollars left, than a man with ten hundred dollars can 
spare five per cent., having but nine hundred and 
fifty left. 

Yet to do as some propose — tax the big incomes so 
heavily as to leave all net incomes equal, would be 
neither practical nor just. 

If a man is used to spending ten thousand a year, 
it would certainly be harder on him to cut his scale 



566 Taxation. .- [§470/ 

down to nine hundred and fifty dollars, than it would 
be on the thousand-dollar man to cut his 'scale down 
to nine hundred and fifty. But then arises the ques- 
tion whether it otight to be harder, and that is too 
big a question to be settled here. 

The next important argument in favor of a pro- 
gressive income-tax is that it tends to make men stop 
work after they have got enough, and give young men 
a better chance. The whole community would benefit 
by that, if the older men would use their leisure for 
the benefit of the community, in charity and politics; 
but it is not at all certain that they would. If their 
tendency to do so is increasing, that would be an in- 
crease in the argument for a progressive income-tax. 
But the argument fails because it is an argument for 
increasing the difficulty of men reaching a competence 
to retire on and devote themselves to the public good: 
if the progressive tax would stimulate men to retire, 
it would to the same degree make it hard for them 
to get enough to retire on. 

470 r^;. Discnm- In some countries they do not levy the 
ination of sources, income-tax ou wagcs or profits, but only 
on interest and rents; and this certainly removes the 
objections a stage farther off: the tax no longer ob- 
structs earning, but only saving. 

It would not be well to tax interest the same as rent 
(472 /), because, as population grows, and people crowd 
together, rents tend to increase; while as capital in- 
creases, the rate of interest tends to decrease. 

There is still more to be said in favor of exempting 
wages and profits, and taxing rent and interest: it 
would tend to set men to producing, who would other- 
wise be living in useless indolence upon what their fathers 
470 w. As equal- had made. It would also tend to equal- 
izing fortunes. {r^e mcu's fortuucs. But that is attainable, 
and probably desirable, only as you can equalize men. 
Certainly the way to attain it is not to clog the able 
man, but to help the weaker one. It might help him, 
to largely decrease his percentage of taxation if you 
could do so by slightly increasing the percentage 



§47°/] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 567 

on the larger income of able men. But as nearly as 
we can get at the figures, there are so many more people 
with small incomes than with big ones, that if you 
wanted to halve the taxes of people with less than one 
thousand dollars a year, instead of increasing richer 
people's taxes "a slight percentage", you would have 
to more than double them — multiply them by about 
two and a half: and if you wanted to halve the taxes 
of people with less than four thousand dollars a year 
(the income that the law of 1894 tried to exempt), 
you would have to multiply the taxes of those with 
more, by about four. Mr. Godkin figured that the 
result of dividing all English incomes of over $15,000 
among the community at large would be that each person 
would be richer by about four cents a day. 
MQ(i). Asoffset- A progressive income-tax could be 
ting injustice in made to offsct the injusticc in some other 
taxes — of the indirect taxes on necessities, 
for instance (468 a), but only very roughly. Yet, if we 
are to have a system of bad taxes to balance each 
other's badnesses, as most of the ordinary taxes — 
especially the duties and excises, come easier on large 
incomes than on small ones, a heavier tax on large 
incomes would tend to make things even. That may 
be the best we can do at this stage of evolution: and 
of course we have considered the progressive feature 
only on the assumption that we are to have an income- 
tax, bad or not. 

Now if we have it, does the state give anything in 
return to justify making it progressive? No: as a 
470 r/; Out of man's income increases, the state does no 
proportion to TCiovQ for him, in proportion, than it does 

state's services, i -i -u- • • n i j_ •^ 

while his income is small, but rather 
less in proportion. The protection of the rich man's 
life, liberty and pursuit of happiness really calls for less 
from the state than does the protection of the poor 
man's. The rich man lives where he is less subject to 
attack from violence or disease, he is less subject to per- 
secution, and is in a better position to take care of 
himself in every way, than is the poor man: so the state 



568 Taxation. [§470/ 

has to do less for him merely as a man. From this 
point of view, then, there is no justice in the state 
taxing a man more in proportion, while its service to 
him grows less in proportion. As already stated, the 
ideal is to tax in proportion to his ability. The attempt 
to tax beyond that is only one manifestation of the 
constant effort of those who can produce little, to get 
along at the expense of those who can produce much.* 

This is practicable and desirable only through philan- 
thropy, not through spoliation. We already have 
needed to touch that question, and will need to consider 
it farther, later. 

Meanwhile, in spite of the arguments just given, 
some very good writers say that the notion that taxa- 
tion should be gauged by the service rendered, is rather 
out of date, and they give one very good reason — that it 
is impossible to gauge what the state does for men: 
to civilized man, the state is simply a condition of 
existence, like air or water — in a sense, all civilized 
men owe it everything, and there are no degrees in 
everything. "In a sense", as just said, the argument 
is good. But it cannot upset the other side : questions 
of justice come in regarding even the distribution of air 
and water. Yet undoubtedly, a man with more money 
than he can reasonably use, should do more in propor- 
tion for the community, than a man who has only what 
he can reasonably use, or less. But justice is one thing 
470 r/f;. Taxation and human charity another. If the com- 
versus benevolence, munity tries to rob the rich for the benefit 
of the poor, under the cover of taxation, it simply at- 
tacks whatever tendency the rich may have to give 
voluntarily. When one thinks of the increasing mil- 
lions given year by year to charity and education — 
more, probably, in America than in any other country, 
it is easiei to see how such taxation might close pocket- 
books more than it would open them. As an illustrative 
case: when the income-tax of '94 was enacted, one of 

* ' ' The theory of progressive taxation is a vestige of the old 
prejudice that regarded wealth as ... a sort of theft from the 
rest of the country." (Menier, quoted by Wells.) 



§ 47° ^] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 569 

the journals gave an instance of a benevolent man 
who said: "Oh well, if they want to take it by force 
I'll simply deduct it from my charities." 

But if all taxes are, in that sense, "taken by force": 
why should a man propose to deduct that one from 
his charities, if he did not deduct others? Because 
that one was not levied on an even basis to all men. 
No one with an income of less than $4,000 was called 
upon to pay it. 

Yet looking at the matter solely from the standpoint 
of the poorer people: if through taxation they help 
themselves to the accumulations of the great producers, 
cannot they very well afford to do without their bene- 
factions ? Doubly No : the less secure the enterpriser 
470 r/; Taxing ^^ ^^ ^^^ results of his enterprise, the more 
away business apt he is to stop producing, and stop em- 
ana eneuo ence, ploying labor — in Other words I the more 
taxation attacks accumulations, the less those able to 
accumulate and to help other men to accumulate, will 
care to. We realized this principle even when we 
were talking of taxes laid on all alike, but of course it 
would be vastly more effective when taxes are laid with 
special force against what people can manage to do 
without: then the great producer would discharge his 
hands as soon as he had money enough. 

The other consideration alluded to, against the com- 
munity helping itself to the accumulations of the rich 
rather than -waiting for their voluntary benefactions, 
is that it would embitter the feeling of those able to 
help, against those who need help ; and this is destructive 
of the best interests of all concerned. Where willing- 
ness to help is changed into reluctance to help, and 
embittered reluctance at that, it is safe to say that 
the ablest part of the community would find plenty of 
ways to avoid helping. Communities who have begun 
to alienate their wealthy people, have found them 
traveling off to wiser communities, and taking their 
wealth with them. Ohio has not made much by 
driving the Standard Oil Company out of the state, or 
Massachusetts by driving out the headquarters of the 



570 Taxation. [§470/ 

Bell Telephone Company. Neither has a certain Swiss 
canton by driving one of its wealthiest citizens to 
America. True, the first two of those things were 
net done by taxation, but by foolish legislation; it 
may as well have been taxation, tho, as anything else. 
The trouble would not stop at emigration, however, 
and much less at bitterness on one side: that is sure 
to engender bitterness on the other side; this reacts 
again, and so on interminably, until we reach the 
Roman social wars, and the French Revolution, with 
the destruction of everything the community values. 
470 r/w;. Character- They havc progressive income-taxes in 
istic of militarism. ^Q-j^Q leading European states now, and 
there are much more active signs of social war there 
than here. Those nations are full of socialism, and 
the only logical conclusion of socialism, if it is pushed to 
its logical conclusion, is, as Spencer declared, social war. 
..,rt, , „ . . The American experience is that durino; 

470 rw;. Heaviest . .ir- j_ ,-, ■, i 

on those least able the civil war, the mcome-tax, tho clearly 
to bear It. unconstitutional (466^, 466/), was re- 

ligiously paid by most widows, orphans and patriots; 
and profanely laughed at by many other people. Per- 
haps half of what the law called for was paid. The 
tax of '94, there being no war on, was declared uncon- 
stitutional by the Supreme Court. There have been 
income-taxes in some of the states, of which only one 
or two survive as fruitless relics of an ignorant but con- 
fiding past. 

As a matter of fact, among the other leading nations, 
income-taxes are actually associated to-day, on the 
whole, with the militant grade of civilization, tho 
Switzerland has them, and Russia and France have 
not. If the support of immense standing arm^ies 
were not forced upon England, Germany and Italy, the 
income-tax would probably not be needed or tolerated 
by them. 

In Italy the tax pays a little smaller proportion of 
the revenue than in England ; but Italy is so poor that, 
just or unjust, the tax is felt to be a stern necessity . In 
Germany it has yielded very well, but through despotic 



§47i] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 571 

methods of collection that Americans would never endure. 
In Switzerland the Canton de Vaud has adopted it under 
its progressive form, and is already driving away- 
capital and industry. It does not amount to anything 
in the rest of Europe. In France and Russia it does not 
exist as a national tax. 

In England, where it works better than 
VnVasamcetsit% anywhere else but Germany, the income- 
tax supplies only one sixth of the national 
revenue; and altho, the world over, people without 
any incomes to tax are of course fiercely agitating for 
income-taxes, the weight of intelligent opinion, while 
acknowledging their ideal justice, is against them, as 
practically a great injustice. Its abolition was among 
the unfulfilled promises of several Gladstone adminis- 
trations. Gladstone, who by an unprecedented com- 
bination of economic insight, training and experience 
was better able to judge an income-tax than any other 
man who ever lived, said: "It does more than any 
other tax to demoralize and corrupt the people." And 
even his chronic opponent Disraeli agreed* with him on 
this topic so far as to say: "The odious features of 
this tax cannot be modified." Thorold Rogers said: 
''Every chancellor of the exchequer has condemned it 
in principle and [from necessity] followed it in practice." 
In the face of such authority, the knowledge and 
the motives of anybody favoring an income-tax as 
other than an emergency measure, can hardly both 
be above suspicion. 

471. Inheritance- ^h^ same can justly be said of Inheri- 
taxes, tance-taxes. They can easily be avoided 

by gift before death, and even when they are not, they 
are not only open to all the objections against the 
other inquisitorial taxes — as putting premiums on lying, 
but, unless they are restricted to collateral inheritance, 
they are at the expense of the widow and the orphan 
at the very time they lose the husband and father 
whom they have depended upon to meet their expenses. 
Moreover, the widows and orphans pay more than 



572 Taxation. [§ 4:71 

their share of such a tax, because they are not as able 
hars as other inheritors — in fact they are generally 
represented by executors or administrators who will 
not lie for them at all. 

But inheritance-taxes are not all imposed on the 
widow and orphan. Sometimes there is no immediate 
family to inherit, and except when collateral heirs have 
A-,*, ^ n I, * I been dependent on the decedent, the col- 

471 (a). Collateral , ^ . F . ., , . .11 

not very lateral mheritance-tax is among the less 

obieotionabie, objectionable of the inquisitorial taxes. 
A man is apt to feel more free with a sudden windfall 
than with slow and laborious gains — ^more apt to pay 
a tax on it without lying, and better able to afford it. 
Ai] (b). Conctu- The entire tax, direct and collateraL 

^'O"*- never yielded much, and it is doubtful if 

it ever will yield -enough to justify bothering the com- 
munity and paying the collectors. Sometimes when 
a very rich man dies, the figures look large, but comparing 
the total with the total of taxation, they are insignificant. 
The New Yor)^. Evening Post in June, 1906, said: 

"Inheritance taxes are the favored remedy jtist now for the 
ills of aggregated wealth, and the Massachusetts Labor B-ureau 
has done a timely service by bringing together in its May 
bulletin the facts as to the present status of the inheritance- 
tax in this country. Only thirteen of the States and Territories 
are now without a tax of some sort upon inheritances. But at 
present these taxes constitute neither a means for the dispersal 
of swollen fortunes, nor an item of much importance in the, 
public revenues. New York State, which collected $5,010,434 
in 1905 from the estates of 5,431 decedents, stands far ahead of 
the rest. The only other State which receives so much as a 
raillion is Pennsylvania, with $1,677,185 for 3,600 decedents. 
The whole amount collected, the country over, seems to be 
somewhat more than ten and one-half million dollars. So, in 
the collection of a tax which everybody believes in, the year's 
actual returns for thirty-two States and Territories would only 
keep New York City going for a month." 



CHAPTER XL. 

INQUISITORIAL DIRECT TAXES (CONTINUED). 

Personal-Property Tax. 

Now assuming that a man produces his own income, 
and reflecting that the business processes on which 
stamp-taxes have been collected, are also generally pro- 
ductive, there remains one objection common to all 
the taxes but the inheritance-tax, that we have so far 
considered: they are taxes on production, and there- 
fore tend to obstruct it, and to restrict the community's 
prosperity. 

472. Personal- Yet instead of taxing production, to tax 

property taxes. only property already accumulated would 
discourage saving, but perhaps no more than the taxes 
we have already considered, discourage producing; and 
it would not be all the time bothering people while they 
are trying to do their work, as do most of the taxes we 
have so far considered. A direct tax on accumulated 
property, then, would seem better than any tax that 
we have discussed, and in some respects it is, but we 
shall find some in which it certainly is not. 

Then let us consider accumulated property under the 
usual two divisions of personalty and realty. 
Al2(a), Uncertain Now uot all taxcs on personal property 
of diffusion. ^^.g incapable of diffusion. Of course all 

taxes tend to diffuse themselves and become indirect : any 
man, whether a landlord, a money-lender, a manufacturer 
or a mere exchanger, will naturally charge his taxes 
to his customers if he can: so personal property per- 
manently used in business (as well as that produced 

573 



^74 Taxation, [§ 472a 

to be immediately exchanged, which we have already 
considered) can often pass on its taxes to the consumer. 
A man using machinery or keeping a livery stable, 
for instance, can generally take the taxes on his plant 
into account when he fixes his prices (464-464 h) . Com- 
petition will not always prevent him charging in his 
taxes. Some writers are very fond of reasoning that 
it will, but it is hard to see why competition should pre- 
vent his charging in his taxes, any more than his in- 
surance or even his clerk-hire. So far, then, as the 
man paying such taxes can be like the man paying 
duties and excises — a sort of buffer to pass them on 
easily through the community, it seems eminently prac- 
ticable to tax personal property. 

But there are grave questions of its ideal 
folbiJtIxatiln' justice. It is vcry apt to make the same 
property pay taxes twice. At first sight 
it seems plain that if a man enjoys a fortune in such 
personal property as stocks, bonds, promissory notes, 
mortgages, etc., he ought to contribute just as much 
to the government as a man with an equal fortune in 
real estate. But the fact is that he would contribute 
even if he were not directly taxed, and that if he is 
directly taxed, he contributes, to some extent, a second 
time, either for himself or somebody else: for stocks, 
bonds and mortgages are only bits of paper showing that 
a man has an interest in property that already pays taxes 
wherever it may be located. The property of all cor- 
porations, including, of course, their real estate, is 
taxed. So far, however, as earning power or "good- 
will" is represented in stocks and bonds (and that is 
sometimes very far), it is apt to be taxed but once. 

Corporations generally pay taxes before declaring 
dividends, and therefore some states are wise and just 
enough not to tax stocks; and there is a growing ten- 
dency to abolish taxes on all the mere evidences of 
indebtedness just alluded to. 

Moreover, a man owning only personal property, is 
apt to pay a real-estate tax anyhow : if he sleeps or eats 



§ 472<^] Inqidsitorial Direct Taxes. 575 

or does business under a roof, and pays for the right, 
he really pays part of the taxes of the men who have 
real estate. Unless the man who appears to pay the taxes 
on any building, uses it entirely himself, or it stands 
vacant, he does not (as we shall see later) really pay all 
the taxes, any more than a man who first pays a duty 
or an excise: the tax usually distributes itself, and is 
really indirect. As a rule, tenants of buildings really 
pay the taxes on them: so it is not true that unless 
they own real estate or pay personal taxes, they pay 
none at all. For this reason, among many others, the 
argument that fairness requires taxing personal property, 
does not amount to nearly so much as it seems. 

There is still another very great danger of duplication. 
Everybody knows where real estate is, and there it is 
taxed. But there is an old principle that personal 
property follows the owner, which breeds a tendency to 
tax bonds, promissory notes and other evidences of 
credit at the residence of the creditor. There is a con- 
flicting principle, however, that they should be taxed 
at the situation (technically the situs) of .the property 
on which they are based. This often leads to their 
being taxed in both places. There is a case of a 
Western lady in Massachusetts, cited by Wells, which 
covers more than one point we have been going over. 
She wanted to be in an educational town, and helped 
its tax-roll by building a fine house. Her personal 
property was held by a trustee in Indiana, and taxed 
to him there. But it appears to have consisted largely 
of bonds on property in another state, where it was 
taxed again — that being the only place where it should 
have been taxed at all. When she had got comfortably 
settled in Massachusetts, she was requested to pay a 
third time there — a tax on her income. She said: 
"This will, if enforced, be a decree of my personal 
banishment from the state as effectual as that which the 
state formerly launched against Roger Williams and the 
Quakers" (470 /, 470 c>, 472 J). 

472 re;. Effect on Suppose there are two townships side 
prosperity. \^y gi^e, one of which taxes personal prop- 



^^6 Taxation. [§47^^ 

erty, and the other does not. Other things even, 
the effect, as between them, will be that, as personal 
property — farm-tools, cattle, machinery, merchandise, 
of course will prefer the township where they are 
not taxed: one town will grow richer in personal prop- 
erty, and the other grow poorer (470 /, 470 o, 472 6). 
That will benefit the richer town, as far as taxes are 
concerned, even if personal property is not taxed, 
because the employment of all this personal property 
on the real estate, in developing farms, factories and 
commerce, will be an influence to make the real estate 
more valuable — will develop wealth that can pay more 
taxes. Moreover, as the chances to develop this wealth 
will attract more people from outside, their competition 
for land will also raise its price. So, for twofold rea- 
sons, the taxes can best be raised from the land, with- 
out taxing and driving away the personal property 
which has made the real estate valuable. The value 
of real estate usually depends upon bringing and using 
personal property upon or near it. That is true even 
of a mine, especially under modern conditions. You can- 
not work one without tools, and under modern condi- 
tions you cannot often work profitably without very 
good tools — chemical as well as mechanical: if you do, 
your competitor, who works with them, will get out 
more minerals for the same money, and undersell you. 
But it may be asked: how can Wall Street property 
be valuable on this principle: there is no farming or 
mining or manufacturing and merchandising there? 
There is certainly merchandising: for the railroads and 
many mines and industrial establishments are sold, 
partly or entirely, over and over again there, every 
year; and if making a bankrupt affair into a paying 
one (or sometimes, alas! a paying one into a bank- 
rupt one) or making a big effective concern out of 
several little ineffective ones — if making any of these 
things, is manufacturing, there is certainly manufac- 
turing done there. Take out of Wall Street the money, 
share^ and bonds, dealt in and reorganized there, 
unless you brought in some other personal property to 



§472<^] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 577 

take their place, the real estate would not be worth as 
much as a poor farm of the same size, and could not 
pay as much in taxes. 

Mr. Ensley * summed up the bearing of these facts 
on taxation by saying : ' ' Never tax anything that would 
be of value to your State, that could and would run 
away, or that could and would come to you." In other 
words, never tax any movable property. 
472 (d). Personal ^^ ^^ ^^^ practicability of collecting taxes 
property hard to ou pcrsoual property : except machinery, 

find or appraise. -, i-ir i, , e- 

merchandise and larm products, most of 
such property is very hard to find. Money and all sorts 
of securities are seldom seen by anybody but the owner. 

Taxes are not paid on any bonds to speak of; a 
striking evidence is shown in the prices of bonds and 
stocks. Stocks, as said before, are not always subject 
to taxation, the taxes being paid by the companies 
before dividends are declared, while bonds are subject 
to a taxation which, if paid, would absorb from a third 
to a half of the income they yield: yet while there is 
a difference in the prices of stocks and bonds, there is 
no such difference as there would have to be if the 
taxes on bonds were actually paid. In other words: 
people owning them, do not generally confess the fact 
to the assessors. 

Moreover, all these things are changing hands so 
constantly that unless an impossible army of appraisers 
attends to them all at the same instant, many of them 
must be appraised at different times in different hands. 

Even if public lists of personal property could be 
had and kept, like those of real estate, the assessors 
could appraise well, only stocks and bonds sold at the 
exchanges, and the simplest sort of tools and produce, 
like the farmer's. In regard to a great factory or a 
great merchant's stock, or a rich man's furniture and 
pictures, the assessor is no judge of values. He usually 
tries to get at them by making the taxpayer give a 
list of his property and its value „ The effect of this 

* "What Should be Taxed, and How it Should be Taxed." 



578 Taxation. [§472(i 

method on both nonest men and rogues is almost as 
bad a premium on lying as the income-tax: rogues — 
and not very great rogues at that — evade it, and honest 
men have to pay the rogues' share. Nay, as already 
illustrated, in this regard, men honest in other regards 
often play the part of the rogues. 

Lying is far from the only way of avoiding taxation 
of personal property. In the comparatively few cases 
where cities still try to tax it, the rich city man makes 
his "legal residence" at his country home, where taxes 
are light, and even makes that country home in some 
other state, if his actual state taxes personalty more 
rigorously than some neighboring state. Corporations 
do likewise (470 /). 

If we were to cease the folly of trying 
autholkie'sand directly to tax personal property, we 
operation of natu- ^ould uot thus throw all the direct taxes 

ral laws. . ^ ... 

Upon real estate : there would still remam 
the other direct inquisition-taxes, and the franchise- 
taxes, not to speak of the indirect taxes— if we think 
indirect taxes better than direct taxes on personal 
property, incomxCS and inheritances; but that is very 
doubtful. As to franchises, we will consider them 
later. 

The real-estate owners most given to considering 
such subjects — the great financiers and real-estate 
owners of the cities, almost all favor abolishing taxes 
on personal property, and this in spite of such a step 
tending to throw the burdens over upon real estate. 
Their position is that not only is the personal tax a 
bad tax, but that if the fifth (roughly speaking) of the 
total taxation which is now collected from personal 
property, were added to the four-fifths now collected 
from real estate, they would not as a rule have to pay 
any more than they pay now, but simply pay it all out 
of one pocket instead of some out of the other. The 
entire abolition of the personal tax is seriously proposed 
not only by virtually the ablest business men, but also 
by virtually all of the best writers and commissions. 



§ 472 <?] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 579 

Even the practice of most of the intelHgent world 
regarding personal taxes, has come to be such that they 
are fast disappearing from intelligent communities. 
^They have been abandoned in Europe, except as in- 
volved in income-taxes. 

The census of 1900 gives the real property of the 
United States at about thirty-nine billion, and the 
personal at about twenty-six billion, the personal 
being, then, two-fifths of the whole. Real estate 
being so much more in evidence, this is undoubtedly 
an underestimate of the personalty, and most of the 
personalty is in the cities. Yet in New York, Cin- 
cinnati and San Francisco, tho probably more per- 
sonal property than real estate is owned in all of 
them, but one-fifth of the state and local taxes is now 
collected from personal property. In some cities less 
than one-fiftieth is. In the most advanced places, no 
effort whatever is made to make lists of personal prop- 
erty, or to disprove any statement any taxpayer may 
make regarding it. 

The latest word on the subject is the report of the 
New York Commission in January, 1907. It uses the 
following language regarding the personal-property tax : 

The personal-property tax is a farce. " It falls inequitably 
upon the comparatively few who are caught. The burden it 
imposes upon production is out of all proportion to the revenue 
jt produces. It is time the situation was faced squarely and 
the tax in its present form abolished. 

" So far as the personal-property tax attempts to reach in- 
tangible forms of wealth, its administration is so comical as 
to have become a by-word. Such a method of collecting 
revenue would be a serious menace to democratic institutions 
were it not so generally recognized as a howling farce.'" 

The Commission states that the yield of the personal- 
propert}^ tax in New York City is less than $3,000,000 
out of $28,000,000, while nobody doubts that the per- 
sonal property of the city exceeds in value the real 
estate.* 

* In Connecticut from 1855 to 1885, the personal property 
listed for taxation fell from one-tenth of the taxable property of 



580 , Taxation. [472^ 

The attempt to tax personal property directly, sur- 
vives most actively outside of the cities, and in states 
that have few cities. And yet, the farmer serves his 
own interest very poorly by resisting the removal of 
the tax. He may or may not be more honest than the 
city dweller, but his neighbors know his affairs better, 

the state to one-thirtieth. In '89 a law was passed providing 
that owners of securities who would register them should be 
taxed but one-fifth of one per cent, instead of the two and a 
half before levied. The first year brought out twenty- two 
millions that had not appeared before. 

In 1866 Cincinnati paid about equally on realty and per- 
sonalty: in '92 realty paid three and a half times as much as 
personalty. 

In 1868 in Boston realty paid about half as much again as 
personalty: in '90 it paid over three times as much. Of six 
hundred million bonds of corporations outside the state known 
to be held in Boston in the nineties, only forty-five million were 
taxed, and nearly all of that belonged to estates of widows, 
orphans, etc., held in trust. 

In Jersey City in '92, personalty paid one-thirteenth; in '70 
Brooklyn reported over one-eleventh personalty; in '93 little 
over one-thirtieth, and nearly two-thirds of that from corpora- 
tions; in '93 but one and one-half per cent, was personalty. 

In the states of New York, Wisconsin and Georgia, the 
attempt to enforce the laws taxing personalty is gradually 
being abandoned. 

States with listing laws fare little if any better than states 
without. In 187 1 California made very stringent laws taxing 
personal property. Some of the effects were very funny. 
According to the assessment reports, butter, wool and honey 
were no longer produced in counties full of cows, sheep and 
bees, nobody lent or borrowed any money, and in fact two-thirds 
of that previously in the state disappeared. In five years 
San Francisco paid on only one-third of the money and two- 
thirds of the other personal property that she had paid on 
before. 

From 1885 to 1893, Ohio had a most stringent listing law, and 
yet the county containing Cincinnati paid less than one per cent, 
of its taxes on personalty. In 1892 the people had $190,000,000 
in bank and listed but $38,000,000. The counties containing the 
five chief cities had $128,000,000 in bank and returned less 
than $7,000,000, while the rural counties where the cla,mor for 
personal taxation is always loudest, had $70,000,000 in bank 
and paid taxes on nearly half of it. This state of affairs led 
to the appointment of a very able commission who reported 
that " the tax upon personal property makes fanners pay from 



§472^] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 581 

and a larger share of his personal property is in things 
like crops, animals and farm machinery, which he can- 
not conceal or successfully underestimate. It is there- 
fore more difficult for him to evade the tax than for 
his city neighbor to. In consequence statistics show 

four to seven dollars where people in large cities pay one", and 
they called the system "a school of perjury", adding: "It im- 
poses unjust burdens . . . upon the farmer ... all of whose 
property is taxed because it is tangible; upon the man who is 
scrupulously honest; and upon the guardian, executor and 
trustee, whose accounts are matters of public record." 

A tax commission of New Hampshire in 1876, after speaking 
of the "corrupting and demoralizing influence" of attempting 
to tax personal property, "frankly admit that they are unable 
to frame any law to which a free people would submit, or should 
be asked to submit, that will bring this class of property under 
actual assessment more effectually than it now is". 

An Illinois commission in 18S6 asserted that the existing 
system "is debauching to the conscience and subversive of the 
public morals — a school for perjury, promoted by law". 

A Connecticut commission in 1887 reported that "the results 
of an investigation of nearly three years into the workings of 
our tax system have brought us to the conclusion that all 
items of intangible property ought to be struck out of the list. 
As the law stands it may be a burden upon the conscience of 
many, but it is a burden on the property of the few, not because 
there are few who ought to pay, but because there are few 
who can be made to pay". 

A West Virginia commission in 1884 asserted that "the pay- 
ment of the tax on personalty" (in the state) "is almost as vol- 
untary, and is considered pretty much in the same light as dona- 
tions to the neighboring church or a Sunday-school". 

In Massachusetts the most intelligent officials admit that 
their system is a comparative failure. 

Wells (from whom the foregoing is condensed) calls the sys- 
tem one "which powerfully contributes to arrest and hinder 
natural development, to corrupt society, and is without a 
parallel in any country claiming to be civilized ". And he says 
elsewhere : ' ' There is not a single economist or financier of note 
. . . who upholds the system." 

Seligman says : "In recent years in both England and France 
the necessity of raising increased revenue has drawn especial 
attention to the subject of local taxation; but in neither of 
these two countries has any prominent writer or speaker advo- 
cated the direct taxation of personal property, or even alluded 
to the subject except to scout the very idea of such a proposi- 
tion." 



582 Taxation. [§472/ 

472 rA Showing that in the states where the fanners have 
of statistics. kept Up active attempts to tax personal 

property, they generally pay most of the personal- 
property taxes themselves, while city people avoid them. 

If the farmers did not pay personal taxes, they would 
have to pay more on their farms, it is true, but not 
as much more as they now pay in personal taxes: 
because the present city personal-property tax, which 
the farms would then help to pay, is relatively much 
smaller than the rural personal-property tax, which 
city real CvState would then help to pay. 

The objections to the personal-property tax are not 
yet understood throughout the country generally: If 
they were, the tax would be abolished. In many 
places people are still working away at all sorts of 
hopeless devices to get personal taxes fairly and fully 
paid. The favorite remedy for the difficulties of the 
tax, proposed by those who favor it, is one worthy of 
the other features of the tax — "pub- 
?J'^ ^aWo'iish''^'' licity ' ' — the pet remedy for malfeasance in 
means toward a officc. This is an acknowledgment that 

foolish end. ^ . ^ ^ ° ^ . 

the tax does its best to make scoundrels. 
This publicity is sought by putting lists of personal 
assessments in the newspapers. But that is the same 
sort of invasion of privacy that is one of the reasons 
against the income-tax. And it has no effect: there 
are too many respectable delinquents (470 c): but peo- 
ple who advocate foolish things, always have to carry 
them out by foolish methods. 

Ml (h). "Homo- As scorning foul blows, even against 
geneity" fallacy, fg^j things, wc may as wcll notc here a 
fallacy regarding these inquisition-taxes which has been 
urged against them by high authority, and we may as 
well guard against weakening our case by its use. It 
has been urged, especially against the personal-property 
tax and the income-tax, that neither can be fairly laid, 
because personal property or income is not "homo- 
geneous" — a jaw -breaking way of saying that the 
things which make up either, are not all produced in 



§472'^*] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 583 

the same way — are not of the same kind, and conse- 
quently cannot fairly be taxed in the same way (470 g). 
As an illustration: personal property may be, for in- 
stance, machinery, which constantly deteriorates, or 
interest-bearing securities which, despite occasional 
fluctuations, tend on the whole to advance: because 
as the rate of interest has been gradually decreasing, 
securities yielding a given rate have gradually become 
worth more. Income, too, may proceed from either of 
these sources — one much more reliable than the other, 
or from personal effort, which, it is contended, ought 
not to be taxed at all, as interest or dividends ought. 
The fallacy is in restricting the objection, to taxes on 
such things: it holds against even the land-tax itself. 
Land is as various as almost anything else — it is used 
for a million purposes, and for none at all; it deterio- 
rates — the best tobacco lands of Cuba are exhausted, 
and there is no known way of restoring their peculiar 
virtues; it appreciates— in many a place where, fifty 
years ago, it could not be given away, it is now worth 
millions an acre. No class of subjects for taxation can 
be homogeneous. Taxation has to be done "by and 
large" — it is one of the cases where "The law cannot 
take note of trifles". 

472 r/;. Effect on Tho the world (at least the thinking 
corporations. p^j.^ of i^) admits that the taxation of 

individual personalty is a failure and a wrong, yet 
when the property belongs to a corporation, many think 
that it can be taxed wisely. Perhaps it can be more 
wisely than the personal property of individuals can, 
altho corporations can hide their personal property, 
and lie about it, as easily as individuals can. But as 
corporations are under direct government control, 
appraisers can examine their books and get a knowledge 
of their affairs more readily than they can those of private 
parties: so their property can be taxed more exactly. 
But that it a poor reason for doing it — for putting 
them at a disadvantage as compared with individuals. 
It only affects their personal property anyhow: for 



584 Taxation. [§4722 

their real estate cannot be taxed more readily than 
anybody's else. So their case is simply one more 
illustration of the injustice always springing from 
taxing personal property. 

472 (j). Cause of Much of the clamor for taxing corporations 
prejudice. comcs from the less intelligent employees 

of corporations — of railroads and the like, who have 
had strikes and similar troubles with the corporations, 
and so comprehend all corporations in an unreasoning 
hate. This rage for taxing corporations has done much 
harm — it has obstructed many an important enter- 
prise, and it has even led the poor in some states to 
tax their own little savings in the savings-banks, because, 
forsooth, savings-banks are "corporations". 

Yet there is a sound basis for the demand 
ing franchise and to tax Corporations, so far as the demand 
non-franchise discriminates between corporations con- 

corporations. ■, ■,• r i ■ i-t n 

trolling public iranchises, and those engaged 
in ordinary business. But of course there is no more 
reason for heavily taxing an ordinary business conducted 
by a few men incorporated, than if the same men were 
partners. It is true that they do get some special privi- 
leges from the state (140-1406) and impose some little 
special labors upon it; but these are generally paid for 
by special fees, and should hardly be included among 
objects of taxation. But as to the franchises of 
corporations, we have already seen good reason for tax- 
ing them, altho they do falsely seem at first sight to be 
personal property, as their value is represented in bonds 
and stocks; moreover, as these bonds and stocks are 
constantly sold in public, their value is easy to get at. 
But getting at the real value of franchises is not as 
simple as it appears : doctors disagree a good deal about 
it, the it can undoubtedly be done. As there is a grow- 
ing tendency to grant franchises only on condition that 
they can be bought back by the government at a valu- 
ation, importance is to be attached to an ingenious 
scheme for getting at their value and at the same time 
ensuring their proper taxation, which has been pro- 
posed by Mayor Cutler of Rochester. It is that the 



§47^^] Inquisitorial Direct Taxes. 585 

price to be paid, in case the community buys them 
back, shall be the sum on which they are paying taxes. 
A franchise is not really personal property, even to 
the extent that we saw (140 r) stocks and bonds are: 
it is always in some way or other inseparable from the 
land. We will farther consider franchises then, in con- 
nection with the land, in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

OBVIOUS DIRECT TAXES. 

I. The Realty-Taxes in General. 

We seem now to have considered, and found ill 
suited for the purpose, every important object of taxa- 
tion except the most obvious of all — the one object 
that cannot be hidden or carried out of jurisdiction, or 
successfully lied about. It is Real Estate. 
473. Objections to Yet there are merits of some of the other 
Realty-taxes. taxes which a tax on realty must lack. 

Real estate is more apt to lie unproductive than most 
other kinds of property. And moreover, a tax on it 
cannot have the ease of the indirect taxes, or, perhaps, 
stimtiLate saving quite as they and the other taxes on 
consumption do. 

473 ra;. Their Among primitive peoples, the realty did 

history. ^lot pay any tax, at least directly as a tax: 

in fact, hardly anything like a tax had been evolved — 
or for that matter, anything, like what we now know as 
government. But in the tribal stage, there are generally 
contributions of produce from real estate, for the sup- 
port of the chief; tho as everything is supposed to be 
his, such contributions are more like rent than taxes. 
In the communal stage, too, a share of produce has gen- 
erally been collected for government, but as the land 
belongs to the community, this contribution, too, is 
rather by way of rent than tax. In the feudal stage, 

the sovereign still owned the land: so anything that 
was said on account of it, was strictly rent, tho he 

586 



§ 473 ^] Obvious Direct Taxes. 587 

devoted some of the proceeds to his wars, and perhaps 
to the few other matters of pubhc interest then existing. 
After the nobles began to get the fee of the land, of 
course what the owner in fee simple {^d>) paid the 
government, he paid as taxes. Among our English 
ancestors, the first germ of a fee simple, was the first 
germ of a tax in the modern sense — when Henry II. 
accepted scutage in lieu of military service (56 a). On 
the other hand, in France, under the old regime, up to 
the Revolution, the nobles owned most of the land, 
but paid no taxes. 

The actual taxation of land, then, as distinct from 
rent to the sovereign, certainly appears to be a com- 
paratively modern institution. That would appear 
473 rw. Incidental to indicate that the tax on land is more 
to high civilization, civilized than earlier taxes, or than even 
the ingenious indirect taxes — especially so far as the in- 
direct taxes were started in various countries by the 
representatives of the people, to get a tax that the nobles 
would have to pay. This must have been very often 
because the nobles had all the power and all the land, 
and would not let taxes be laid against the land. The 
land-tax must to that extent be a later evolution, and 
really one of the marks of liberty and progress. 

473 re;. Question Now let US See if that idea is supported 
of diffusion. \^j other facts. We have already said 

that direct taxes tend to diffuse themselves and become 
indirect. Of course they are least apt to diffuse them- 
selves on the things where it is the hardest for the 
first payer to pass them on to somebody else ; or where 
there is least temptation to do so. And the least 
temptation to try to pass them on, is of course with 
things whose range of prices is so great that the cus- 
tomer can readily avoid the tax by putting up with 
cheaper things. Now the one absolutely essential thing 
that varies most in price is land: some of it is worth 
nothing at all ; some of it sells for hundreds of dollars 
a square foot. 

Then if a new tax is put on land which is farmed, 



588 Taxation. [§473 d 

473 w. Views of the old economists — Adara Smith, Ricardo, 
economists. John vStuart Mill and others, said that the 

man occupying it would naturally seek some land cheaper 
by at least' the amount of the tax — he might even go to 
land worth substantially nothing. But the new econo- 
mists say that a man naturally stays at home — that 
473 re;. Fact competition between pieces of land is not 
versus tiieory. perfectly fluid, but on the contrary is 
subject to a good deal of the friction we have spoken of 
before (464) ; that often a man would be apt to be pre- 
vented from going to a piece cheaper (by the amount 
of the tax) than the one he occupies, because of the 
expense of moving, or by already having buildings and 
other things to suit him, or by habit, the attraction of 
old associations, and a thousand other possible considera- 
tions. The idea that a man will always move where he 
can save money by it, presupposes, as all merely economic 
laws do, that the competition between the two matters 
in question is purely one of price. But that is not gen- 
erally the case. Other considerations always come in 
and make more or less friction in the working of any 
economic law, just as they do in any physical law, — so 
much friction, in fact, and so many forces not counted 
upon, that sometimes the law does not work in its 
expected direction at all — or that the result may even 
be counter to the direction of the disturbing force under 
consideration, instead of the expected direction. 

A striking recent illustration of how these two 
opposing tendencies laid our leading authorities by the 
ears is that Professor Seligman, intent on the tendency 
to free competition, says substantially, with the old 
economists : of course the tenant moves unless the land- 
lord pays the tax: so the tax is not distributed, and any 
opinion that it is, is "so very superficial as scarcely to 
deserve a refutation". Mr. Wells, on the contrary, in- 
tent upon the friction that prevents free competition, 
says that the tenant will pay the tax for the sake of 
staying, and that in fact the consumer will generally pay 
the tax for what he wants. So Professor Seligman's 
expression made the disciples of Mr. Wells feel sad. 



§ 473 S] Obvious Direct Taxes. 5S9 

If a tyro might venture an opinion where doctors 
disagree, both are right and both are wrong, as usual in 
such disagreements. As a matter of fact, sometimes 
real estate rents only for the current interest on its 
selHng price (or less), and some rents for that interest 
and taxes. There is such an immense variety of land, 
with such an immense variety of improvements, that 
it is very hard to tell what it will rent for. As a mat- 
ter of fact, if a man hires a room in a hotel, he need 
not necessarily pay his share of the landlord's taxes: 
the landlord may make profit enough on other items 
to pay the taxes himself. It will depend upon what 
competition he has to stand, and can stand. 

Nor would it necessarily be easy for a manufacturer, 
for instance, staying in his old place, after a new tax 
is levied, to charge the tax to his customers. Some of 
473 r/;. Effects on his competitors would be apt to move to 
producers. gg^yg ^l^g amount of the tax, and so be able 

to keep their prices down; and this would force those 
not moving to keep their prices down — in other words : 
to pay the tax themselves, and not try to shift it on 
to their customers. The manufacturers with profitable 
monopolies, or those able enough to produce low and 
make large profits, would simply have their profits 
diminished, but would be able to stand it. Those, 
whether they moved or not, not able enough to make 
profits in excess of the tax, would be driven out of 
business. 

That would diminish the supply of goods, and so of 
course raise prices to restore the equilibrium of de- 
mand and supply (148 d, 148 e). This advance in price 
would of course save some producers who otherwise 
would be forced out of business, and would help pay 
the tax for all producers; and as the advanced price 
comes out of the community, that portion of the tax 
would be distributed after all. 

A-73 (g). stimulate Pcople might work a little harder, or 
production. invention and business faculty bestir them- 

selves a little more, to create new productions and 
cheapen old ones, so as to pay the tax. Such results, 



590 



Taxation. ^ [§ 473 g 



especially in the way of labor-saving inventions, have 
sometimes followed new taxes. So far, then, as the 
public bestirred themselves to pay the increased prices 
for the productions from the taxed realty, the tax 
would be shifted; and the tenant, too, could deny him- 
self and improve his methods for the sake of paying 
some of the tax. What was not paid by these means, 
the landlord would have to pay. 

We will take it as proved, then, that in the general 
run of cases, tho a realty-tax cannot be entirely dis- 
tributed, it must be to some extent. But before we, 
pass on, let us summarize by what agencies: by the 
friction of moving, which will obstruct the producers 
saving the tax by getting cheaper quarters, and so 
lead them to charge it to their customers as far as 
they can; by the restriction of product (and conse- 
quent raising of prices) which will arise from the tax 
driving out of business men not able enough to save 
the tax by cheap production; and by stimulating the 
efforts and ingenuity of all concerned, consumers as 
well as producers, to increase their ability in order to 
meet the tax. 

Now can realty evade its taxes, or, whether shifted 
or not, has somebody got to pay them? Real es- 
tate is, of all things, the most certain to pay its 
473r/?;. Sure to taxes. It cannot, like most personal prop- 
be pa/c/, erty, be hidden when the assessor comes 
around; nor, if the owner does not pay, can realty, 
like most personal property, be sent out of 'reach of 
the collector who will want to sell it and collect the tax. 
473 r/;. and easy As to the asscssor's ability to value the 
to assess, l^^Q kinds of property justly : many kinds 
of personal property are of extremely uncertain value, 
which cannot be determined even by the owner 
himself. On the other hand, realty is known and 
observed by the whole community, and a list of it is 
easily and usually kept open to everybody's criticism. 
In New York City, the lists are now printed, and ob- 
tainable by anybody: so, other things even, the valua- 



§ 474] .-^ Obvious Direct Taxes. 591 

tion put on a piece of real estate cannot often be very 
far from what people in general would consider fair. 
Even political pulls, which often wipe out a man's 
personal tax, cannot so readily affect his realty-tax. 
A73 (J), and cheap- The rcaltv-tax is much the cheapest 
est to collect. of ^H taxes'to collect. A large part of 
the expense of collecting other taxes, is in paying 
men to find the things taxed, and to decide what they 
are worth. 

^I3(k), All owners ^^ ^^ worth while to reflect that if the 
must always pay rcalty-tax could entirely distribute itself, 
'^^^ ' ■ real-estate owners could not even then 

make other people pay it all. If each owner of 
realty could charge all its taxes to his tenants or 
customers, he would himself have to pay the charges 
of other real-estate owners in everything he bought, 
except his sea-food; and even in that, he would have 
to pay his share of the taxes on his fishmonger's shop. 

/i.73 (I). Summary "^^ ^^^ ^P ^^^ comparisou of a realty- 
for and against tax witli the othcr taxes we have been 

the real-estate tax. -j • -j. j > • ^ -<■,-, 

considermg: it does not mvolve double 
taxation, as do taxes on stocks, bonds, mortgages and 
other obligations; it does not tempt to concealment 
or evasion, as do duties, excises, income-tax, inherit- 
ance-tax and personal-property tax — all the vampire 
and inquisition taxes; it does not put the principal 
burden on the poor, as do the vampire-taxes, or put 
it on the honest, as do the inquisition-taxes; the 
property to be taxed can be more fairly valued than 
most other kinds, and cannot be hidden or wasted 
like most other kinds; the tax is sure to be collected, 
despite any amount of bankruptcy and dishonesty ; the 
tax does not, like duties, excises and income-tax, dis- 
courage production; but it does discourage saving, at 
474. Real estate ^^^^^ ^^ badly-governed countries where 
under poor gov- the taxation is ruthlessly oppressive, 
ernment. There, a man would at least put his sav- 

ings into property that he could hide from the tax- 
gatherer, rather than in the kind of property that is 
hardest to hide. Even if that did not discourage saving 



592 Taxation. . [§474 

in sticli countries: as the savings are not put in real 
estate, the demand for real estate is so small that its 
value is low, and taxation is less fruitful in consequence. 
The government of many American cities — notoriously 
New York — has at times been so bad that many wise 
men hesitated to buy real estate there. 

Even the real-estate tax, then, has not the merits 
of the indirect taxes. But indirect taxes have not the 
merits of the real-estate tax. The merits of the indirect 
taxes are only the merits of being adapted to very short- 
sighted people, tho perhaps most people are short- 
sighted. A way to combine at least some of th*e ease 
of payment of indirect taxes, with the certainty and 
reasonableness of real-estate taxes, is to make the 
latter group payable if the payer prefers, in small in- 
stalments. Something in that direction is done in some 
places already. 

Our history contains a striking testimonial to the 
certainty and fairness of taking realty as the basis 
of taxation. In the original Articles of Confederation of 
475. Opinion of ^^e States, it was provided (and to return 
the Fathers. to the provision would probably be the 

greatest improvement that could be made in our policy 
to-day) that each state should contribute to the National 
treasury in proportion to the value of the land * ' granted 
to or surveyed for any person . . . and the buildings and 
improvements thereon". Whether the tax was to be 
actually raised from the land, was left to each state to 
determine: the Articles of Confederation only ordered 
it apportioned among the states according to the land 
and improvements. And that is what taxing real 
estate would substantially amount to at almost any 
time and place : the amount of realty a man might own 
would simply be an index to what taxes he should pay — 
an index of his ability to pay taxes, which modern writers 
all say should be the basis of taxation. But this 
index would of course not be perfect, neither is any 
other that assessors can get at: what they fondly assume 
to be his income, probably least of all. ¥/ith realty as 



§ 476] Obvious Direct Taxes. 593 

an index, the owner would not necessarily pay from 
the income of realty, but from whatever income he 
might have. He might be occupying the realty himself, 
or it might be lying idle. Altho the provision for 
apportionment according to land values was not re- 
enacted in the Constitution, that fact does not necessarily 
show that the constitution-framers differed from their 
predecessors: for during the Revolutionary War, taxes 
were gathered largely from duties and excises: there- 
fore, in the Constitution, such taxes seem to have been 
taken for granted as a matter of habit. 

^^^ r- .. X. One difficulty already experienced in 

476. Equalization. , . j. x x ^.11^. r j_i 

^ levymg a state tax on the realty of the 

counties separately, would have to be overcome in 
levying a United States tax on the realty of the several 
states — the very troublesome difficulty of "equaliza- 
tion" — that is: making each locality bear its just pro- 
portion of the general burden of the state. No such 
difficulty arises regarding local burdens : for the money 
is spent where it is raised. But when a whole state 
is taxed to pay for a state-house at the capital, state 
prison, asylums, legislature, executive, judiciary, etc., 
if one locality pays, say, one per cent, of its property, 
it is not fair that another locality should pay two 
per cent. This difficulty arises because the appraisers 
are nearly everywhere local officers, and those of each 
locality try to appraise low, so that their locality will 
be sure not to pay more than its share of state and 
county burdens. This is generally the reason why 
real estate is appraised at but a third or a half of its 
market value ; perhaps too, it explains much indifference 
in "getting at" personal estate. Till lately, the chief 
remedy in use was to have for each county a "board 
of equalization", made up of officers from various 
sections; but this is cumbrous and not very effective. 
There are quite generally laws that everything shall be 
appraised at its full value, but they are not usually 
effective either. And to have state assessors for 
state purposes, county assessors for county purposes. 



594 Taxation. [§476 

and local assessors for local purposes — to do the work 
three times, would be very cumbrous and expensive. 
476 (a). Remedies Other remedies . proposed are to have 
proposed. different objects taxed by the different 

governments. In New York there is quite a general 
sentiment for reserving the general property-tax (mean- 
ing real estate and personal property) especially for 
local use ; franchises, depending on their nature, for both 
local and state; the inquisitorial taxes (except that on 
personal property) — ^income, succession, etc., for the 
state, and it has lately been decreed in some places, to 
reserve taxation on mortgages for the state. Excise 
and duties are already virtually for the nation. At pres- 
ent, the thing tends to work itself out as indicated, but 
making the personal -property tax local, and reserving 
the other bad taxes for the state and nation, does not 
make any of them good taxes, or promote broad 
patriotism. 

I said ''at present" because many people think there 
is a growing tendency in people's minds, as there cer- 
tainly is in natural law, for all inquisition and vam- 
pire taxes to disappear (468 e). But if they ever do, 
it will be a long time hence, and would involve amend- 
ments to the constitutions of most of the states, and 
(for national taxes) of the United States (466 o) : those 
constitutions require taxation of all "property". But 
if the bad taxes disappear, the equalization difficulty 
would settle itself: assessment for all the governments 
could be done by the national officials, who could be 
appointed by the central authority, instead of depend- 
ing on votes, and so being subject to local bias. 

A simpler way of equalization, and a very promising 
one, was lately enacted in Connecticut. It makes each 
locality responsible for state taxes in proportion to the 
amount raised for local taxes. This not only removes 
the temptations to wrong assessments, but also pro- 
motes local economy. 

One consequence of assessors not wanting to alienate 
the voters, is that they generally assess the property 
of non-residents too high. This is guarded against in 



§47^^] Obvious Direct Taxes. 595 

England by permitting a man to vote in all places where 
he owns property. There are many other reasons for 
this — more, apparently, than against it. 

II. Varieties of Realty -Taxes. 

So far, we have discussed merely the general topic 
of taxing real estate. But there are several ways of 
doing it. The principal ones that our people now 
have under consideration, we may say amount to four. 
First is the general present method of 
sfngieTax*/"*^^' taxing all the realty — land and improve- 
Separated Tax, ments, without re8:ard to whether other 

Appropriation-tax. ' <= . rr^^ • 

things are taxed or not. This we can 

properly call realty-tSi'^. . Then there is a second propo- 
sition, supplementary to the first, that there shall be 
only one single tax levied, and that that shall be on 
realty (including, if we please, the land devoted to the 
operation of franchises). This is the proper ''single 
tax", and we would better reserve the name for it. 
Then, third, is the proposition that the land shall be 
taxed separately from the improvements ; this and 
each of several others have been called single tax: so 
to distinguish, perhaps we would better call this the 
separated tax. Then the fourth proposition, which 
may be applied to any one of the preceding three, is 
to tax all the value of the realty away — virtually to 
appropriate all the land for public use. This also has 
been called single tax, but as that term has lost mean- 
ing by being applied to so many things, we may as 
well call this one appropriation-tax. 

As we have considered the first — the realty-tax in 
general, let us go on to consider the three proposed 
modifications of it. 

Henry George was by no means the first to advocate 

that it should be a single tax. As early as the close 

of the seventeenth century, John Locke 

478. The Single Tax. ^^^g^^ ^j^^t all taxes ultimately Vv^ere dis- 

(a). Locke s theory. .. °^ ^ . ^ ^-^^^ 

tnbuted, and gravitated to the land, and 



tQ6 Taxation. [§ 478 a 

might as well be put there in one single tax, as by a 
troublesome and expensive indirection. Nearly a hun- 
dred years later, his ideas were taken up by the physio- 
crats, and they have had many advocates since. 

Of any attempted tax on commodities, Locke said: 
"The merchant will not bear it, the laborer cannot, 
and therefore the landlord must." The fallacies in 
this reasoning, as regards the merchant, are that the 
merchant often will bear it, at least in part, as a matter 
of competition, and also when an even price is usual 
and important, and when the tax is too small to justify 
going to a higher price (464). As regards the laborer: 
by the laborer, Locke apparently meant the producer, 
as distinct from the exchanger (whom he called the 
merchant). Now the producer includes not only the 
laborer, but the enterpriser and the capitalist: these 
later people certainly can bear the tax; and even the 
laborer (at least in our day, if not in Locke's) certainly 
can bear some of it, and does in excises, tariffs, and rent. 
Locke's opinion remained undisputed, 
m(b). waipoie's. ;^Q^g^e^^ ^ntii sij. Robert Walpole, about 

1733, wanted to increase customs duties. Then he took 
ground just the opposite of Locke's: among his argu- 
ments was that the duties were no harder on people 
in general than a land-tax, because consumers of all 
commodities have to pay the land-taxes. The reason- 
ing was that, as everything people want comes from 
the ground, the landlord can make all who use anything 
pay his taxes. 

This reasoning was full of fallacies. In the first place, 
it is no more the entire truth that everything that 
people want comes from the ground, than it is that 
everything is made by Labor with a big L. Either 
statement ignores what value is added to raw material 
or to big-L-Labor by the labor (with a small 1) of a 
Vanderbilt, or an Edison, or a Michelangelo, 

But after we recognize the enormous increases of value 
effected by Ability (or labor with a small 1, if you 
prefer), Walpole is not right, even then: people can 
decline to use some of the things at the enhanced price 



§47^^] Obviotis Direct Taxes. 597 

that the landowner's taxes would impose: so he will 
have to pay at least that portion himself until, and 
unless, it finds its way to other things. 
478 re;. Diffusion ^^ ^^is principle, if a man is rich and 
on different grades wants to live on Fifth Avcnue, and is ready 
of property. ^^ ^^^ £^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ anywhere 

else to save taxes. On the other hand, if a man is 
poor and wants a farm, he may be forced to go down 
a grade for the sake of saving taxes. 

The rule in regard to the distribution of real-estate 
taxes, seems, then, to be that fancy property, for which 
people are ready to pay fancy prices, probably can 
shift its taxes much more readily among such people, 
than can other property among people who seek it 
largely with an eye to economy — except of course such 
people as have already touched bottom — and cannot 
find any property poorer than they have. 

We saw something like this before (464) — that a tax 
can be shifted most readily upon those who will have, 
and those who must have. So the realty-tax, while 
desirable on the whole, is probably harder on average 
property, than on the best and the worst. And there 
is no doubt that under the single tax, agricultural land 
would, on the whole, be at a disadvantage as compared 
with city land: for city land has the monopoly value 
of a spot favored by situation and connections, while 
agricultural land, except for the local truck-garden, 
poultry and dairy business, is more nearly in competition 
with all the land in the world. 

It is important to note, however, that the worst 
property in cities is not generally owned by the poor. 
The rich generally own large quantities of it, and rent it 
to the poor at higher rates, in proportion to its value, 
than they can get for better property: that fact of course 
adds force to the theory that its taxes are shifted. On 
the other hand, in a country township, probably the 
taxes on the farms and ordinary houses could not 
distribute themselves, while if it happened to be a 
favorable region for hotels and summer-villas, probably 
the taxes on them could distribute themselves, at least 



598 Taxation. [§ 478 c 

so far as to the tenants. Nevertheless in such a neigh- 
borhood, the majority of voters would probably be 
short-sighted enough to oppose the single tax on real 
estate, and try to tax also the stocks, bonds and mort- 
gages held by such of the villa residents as voted there. 
In short, the position would be just the reverse of the 
city. The single tax would not be so desirable on the 
whole, and yet its absence would be harder on the 
holders of the superior property — even tho that is the 
very property that would have most of the tax to pay, 
if it were enacted. 

478 (d). Local op- Because of these differences and para- 
tion in taxation, doxcs, it has been wisely proposed to let 
each local government — village, township or city, settle 
its own method of taxation — ^to have ''local option" in 
taxation. 

! This certainly would be wiser than having each 
legislature pass uniform laws for the entire state, even 
if they would do so in accord with the ideas of the most 
intelligent people. But at best, taking the "ideas of 
the most intelligent people" is something that legisla- 
tures are nearly certain not to do ; and the question is 
too new for the most intelligent people to be sure that 
any one scheme would work well in all places. Some 
great cities, and perhaps some great states, have, it 
is true, virtually been brought under the single tax by 
the pure operation of natural laws (472 e, 472 /), but 
it is too early, without farther experiment, to say 
what is best at this stage of evolution, for the rural 
regions generally. 

The fact is that Nature and human nature determine 
a great many questions before legislatures get their 
eyes open to them, and often contrary to what legis- 
latures are able to see. Local option in taxation, for 
instance, is already in quite frequent operation, while 
very few people realize that it is, and while the letter 
of the law is against it. Despite the laws taxing per- 
sonal property, in practice New York City exempts at 
least four fiftlas of its personal property. And in cities 



§47S^] Obvious Direct Taxes. 599 

generally, a much smaller proportion of personal prop- 
erty is taxed than in the country — sometimes less than 
two per cent. In the township of Fulton lately, two asses- 
sors levied outside of the village, and one in the village. 
Those outside listed all the pianos, guns and even fish- 
poles; while the one in the village did not (officially) 
find a gun or a piano there. When it comes, as it cer- 
tainly will, to legalizing such local option, the best 
opinion is not in favor of permitting localities directly 
to create their own systems of taxation: for generally 
they would do it worse than even the legislatures. But 
it seems wise to enable them to give the sanction of 
law, with its regularity and consistency, to the exemp- 
tions which they already know all about, and practice 
with unjust irregularity. 

478 (e). Effect of ^^ ^^ important to try to determine what 

single tax suddenly WOuld be the cffcct OU laudoWUCrS of SUd- 

impose r denly stopping all other taxes, and coming 

to a single tax on real estate. As a realtA^-tax can only 
partially distribute itself, at first sight it seems as if all 
landlords would at once be made poorer by the undis- 
tributed portion of the tax. At second sight, so far as 
stocks represent shares in landed property, that sort of 
personal property would have to pay in either case : be- 
cause the profits from which the dividends are paid, 
would be lessened by the amount of the tax. But 
other forms of personal property would not have to 
pay: so realty-owners might not have to pay materially 
more than they now pay (472 e). But to take a third 
sight, the realty-owners really pay pretty nearly all 
now. As a rule (tho there are many exceptions), people 
who own the realty, own pretty much everything else. 
As nearly as we can tell, nine tenths of the personal 
property taxed, is owned by those who own the land: 
so the change would mainly be paying to Peter what is 
now paid to Paul, less the expense of employing Paul 
to collect it. And Paul costs an enormous deal that 
would then be saved — not only the whole custom-house 
system, and most of the tax -machinery — national, state 



6oo Taxation. [§ 478 ^ 

and local, but also whatever the middleman's profits 
may be (464), and the waste there certainly is, on all 
the indirect taxes. 

Taxation, as we have seen, is really already restricted 
to real estate, to a degree that very few people begin 
to dream. Yet some people reason that if it were sud- 
denly nominally restricted to real estate, there would 
be a great rush to sell real estate, and prices would have 
to fall fearfully to restore the equation of supply and 
demand (148 d). It certainly has not worked that way 
where real estate has been gradually becoming the prin- 
cipal object of taxation, as it has in nearly all advanced 
communities. But if the shifting of taxes to real estate 
were hastened by a sudden enactment, there might be 
a panic, tho as real-estate owners are of the most intelli- 
gent and instructed classes, they probably would realize 
all we have been considering, and, if some forced sales, 
others would be glad to pick up the bargains and sustain 
the market. 

To propose the single tax, then, is not to propose a 
revolution, but merely to recognize and promote an 
evolution that in the most advanced communities is 
already nearly accomplished, and can be fully accom- 
plished without any serious disturbance. 



478 r/;. Experi- The single tax has been tried in Austral- 

^"'^^- asia, and they have even gone as far as the 

separated tax: and, as already said (472 e), the single 
tax has been tried approximately in New York and 
many other places. As already intimated, the people, 
in many of our cities at least, like it as far as they 
have approximated to it, and the Australasians find it 
very satisfactory. Yet the fact that it seems to be 
liked so far as tried, does not necessarily prove that 
it would be liked everywhere : it may prove only that 
it has been tried where conditions are favorable to it, 
and that where it has not been tried, conditions are 
not favorable. In spite of its being popular in the 
cities, our people away from the cities do not even 
comprehend it. The farmer thinks first of his land, 



§ 479] Obvious Direct Taxes. 60 1 

and not of his cattle, crops, machinery, and tools; and 
he thinks, often wrongly, that if all taxes were col- 
lected from the land, his share would be increased. 
The way of reconciling these different opinions is by 
local option. 

It is not universally proposed in our day by the advo- 
cates of the single tax, that the tax should cover all 
the real estate. Some favor what we have agreed to 

479. Separated tax ^f^l ^^^^ ''separated" tax, on the land 
on Jand exclusive alone, and not on improvements, because 
improvements, taxing improvements discourages people 
from making them — from building, draining, etc. It is 
for the interest of the whole community that all rea- 
sonable improvements should be made, and yet a man 
must risk getting from a quarter to a third more 
gross income out of a building, if it is taxed, than if 
it is not. 

New York City has taken the first step toward the 
separated tax by appraising (tho not yet taxing) land 
and improvements separately. 

Under a system drawing all the taxes from the land, 
in many cases the separated tax would be more than a 
mere suggestive stimulus to improvement: for in some 
cases it would almost force people to put up more build- 
ings, so as to get revenue from the buildings to pay the in- 
creased taxes on the land. But sometime back (470 a) 
it was said that that was a stupid scheme, because the 
money would have to come from other investments 
proved better by the fact of the money being in them. 
This fact prevents unimproved real estate being the 
best possible object of taxation: for it could not always 
find capital for improvements. In other words, some 
unimproved real estate is useless, and should not be 
taxed. It is one thing to encourage possible improve- 
ment, but another to demand more improvement than 
could pay, and punish the landlord for not making it. 
Unimproved land, even when worth improving, is not as 
apt to rent for interest and taxes, as improved land, 
because taxes on buildings are more apt than those on 



6o2 Taxation. [§479 a 

the land, to diffuse themselves: a tenant 

AlQ(a). Buildings •^ jz j x. ^ a T^ ^ 4. 

diffuse taxes more can easily nnd cheaper land, but cannot 

readily than land, ^^^^ly ^g ^^gily f^^^ ^ cheaper Or HlOrC 

suitable building: buildings for a given purpose do not 
vary in price nearly as much as land, and the build- 
ing generally costs much more than the land, tho not 
always in big cities or on favorable corners. 

Roughly speaking, the taxes on buildings used in 
production, are paid by the consumer of the goods 
produced, because manufacturers cannot compete with 
each other very much in expense of buildings, and 
therefore (roughly speaking always) must charge new 
building taxes to their customers, or get along with 
less profit, or (if they cannot do that) relinquish business. 

Now it certainly does look as if a large portion of 
real-estate taxes must be diffused to tenants and their 
customers. But suppose the buildings were for the own- 
er's occupancy only, relieving them from taxation would 
A79(b). Neverthe- givc Still Hiorc cncouragement to build 
encoutagesJm-"^ (o^' rather, Icss discouragcmcnt) than now. 
prouement, Personal occupancy under the separated 

tax, is, in fact, the strongest case in favor of building: 
because if the building were taxed and used unproduc- 
tively — as a home, for instance, by the owner — he could 
not distribute the tax: therefore relieving him of the 
tax would be a special encouragement to build a home — 
a ver}^ desirable thing for hosts of reasons. The capital 
for increased house-building could well be diverted from 
less desirable investments; and so far as it might be 
borrowed, there is nothing that encourages saving among 
people in general, like the desire to pay such a debt, 
and own one's home free from it. 

Another argument for the separated tax is that, 
as the land is made already, the separated tax can- 
not discourage making it; but improvements in a 
sense really do make it — that is, they add to the value 
of the land itself as distinct from the improvements — 
sometimes almost create the value. So to exemipt the 
improvements from taxation would help to add value to 
the land. 



§ 480] Obvious Direct Taxes. 603 

But it is a question, already touched on, whether, 
if the tax were taken off from buildings, those who 
own land alone without improvements, could stand 
adding the tax to the land. This is a different ques- 
tion from that of taking all taxes off personalty and 
putting them on realty. In communities where land 
can be had for the asking, taxes taken off buildings and 
distributed over all the land would have to be paid dis- 
proportionately by the poor: for in such communities, 
much of the wealth is in buildings, and to exem.pt them 
would increase the taxes on unused land. On the other 
hand, if, instead of taking off taxes from buildings and 
improvements, they were taken off personalty, the 
owners of unused land could devote the saving to its 
taxes or improvement. 

480. Appropria- Now we come to the appropriation-tax. 

tion-tax. ^s to its morality: so far as the tax can- 

not be diffused, it must rob all present holders of their 
land. That was considered when we discussed property 
rights (66-75). 

Considering that question settled, then, if such a tax 
produced more money than government needed, it 
would be regrettable, as it would encourage wasteful 
legislation. That could not be cured by lowering the 
rate, without the tax ceasing to be an appropriation-tax. 

But if tax of the entire rental value does produce an 
excess, it is proposed by the advocates of the tax to 
devote the surplus to public works, and give it to the 
poor. When we discussed government's promotion 
of convenience, we seemed to see good reason to believe 
that if superfluous money were devoted to public works, 
it would be mainly wasted; and to give it to the poor, 
would, as history proves, simply increase the number 
of the poor (47): receiving money that is not earned, 
makes people slow to earn any. The state takes care 
of the incapable already. To take care of the ca- 
pable would tend to make them incapable. But aside 
from all this, while the state has a right to take money 
for its general purposes — which benefit those from 



6o4 Taxation. [§ 480 

whom it takes the money, as well as the rest of the 
community — to take money from one man to give it 
to another v/ho can support himself if he must, is robbery. 

As to taxing what is called the unearned increment 
of land, we considered that too when we were discussing 
the general question of rights of private property in 
land (74, 74 a). 

The appropriation-tax, then, seems to merit no far- 
ther discussion. 

III. Rental-Value Tax. 

Some time back (475), we spoke of the Articles of 

Confederation making real estate, irrespective cf its 

owm immediate product, a guide or index to the amount 

.01 D + I . of taxes that should be paid. There is 
481. Rental-value . ^, . .^ . . . . . 

Tax is on con- also another connection m wnich it has 
sumption. gQ served — as a guide in taxing consump- 

tion, through a tax on the rental value of the tax- 
payer's dwelling, the tax to be paid by the occupant, 
whether he owns the dwelling or rents it. This tax 
has been approved because a man's dwelling is, despite 
m.any exceptions, a very fair guide to his rate of ex- 
penditure, as well as to his taxable ability. Such a tax 
on what a man consumes, encourages saving, as already 
said. Moreover, his rental valuation can be fairly fixed, 
and cannot be concealed or effectively lied about : there- 
fore the tax offers no premium on dishonesty, as do all 
the other taxes on consumption that we have considered. 
481 ra;. Notareai- The rcutal-valuc tax is not really a real- 
estate tax. estatc tax. If a man paid the usual realty- 

tax on a house and lot, and rented it for a residence to 
another man who paid the rental-value tax we have 
been talking about, the government could not be con- 
sidered as collecting twice on the property: for the 
tenant's rental-value tax is not put on the property, 
as the property cannot be sold to collect it. The rental- 
value tax is really a personal tax, the amount of which 
is determined by the payer's rental, and is really 
intended to tax his general expenditure. Yet a New 



§48ic] Obvious Direct Taxes. O05 

York commission in 1907 reported in favor of making it 
a lien on the property! 

If the owner himself lives on the property, then the 
property can be sold to pay his rental-value tax, but only 
as any other property — even personal property — could 
be sold to pay any tax levied on him. There is no 
reason why the particular piece he lives on, rather than 
any other piece he may own, should be sold to pay his 
rental-value tax or any other personal tax: therefore 
481 (b). Not double the rcntal-valuc tax is not a duplicate tax 
taxation. q^ j^^q ^i^elling, any more than any part 

of a man's property is a double tax on the rCvSt: all 
his property is subject to sale for any one of his taxes, 
if the part on which that one is levied does not yield it. 

It has been objected that, for instance, a rich bachelor 
living in a hall bedroom should be taxed in something 
more than rental value of his dwelling. His real estate 
will be taxed, of course, but beyond that, it is clear 
that attempting to get at exceptional and abnormal 
cases does not pay for the trouble. A rich man living 
meanly would be almost sure to conceal all of his wealth 
that he could, and not unlikely to lie about it. 

But suppose a man lives in two houses at different 
seasons, as so many people do now, or even three or 
four : it is a question whether his rental-value tax should 
be gauged by the one where he votes from, or whether 
he should pay a rental-value tax on all. Of course he 
would be apt to vote from the cheapest, and a man 
ought to be willing to pay for his luxuries. But a family 
does not use materially more in the way of clothes, food 
481 (c). Should be ^^^ drink, jewelry, or hosts of other things, 
on one residence for having three or four houses, than for 
^" ^' having one; and not only are country 

houses good things for keeping great producers up to 
the best working condition, but it is a good thing 
for country regions that people who make money in 
the cities, should spend some of it in the country. City 
people owning country houses should pay for the lux- 
ury, but not pay unduly, so as to discourage a practice 
so much for the general good. 



6o6 Taxation. [§4810? 

It is an interesting and instructive question whether 
the rental-value tax would be shifted. A man looking 
for a house would certainly be apt to say to a landlord: 
"If I live in this house, I must pay such and such a 
rental-tax. I won't take it unless you deduct that." 
s/?/'f/« Then the landlord might say: "I must 
'^ '"^' wait for another customer." In fact, it 
would be a case of demand and supply; if houses were 
plenty and tenants scarce, it would go one way; if 
tenants were plenty and houses scarce, it would go the 
other way. The tenant has to pay the tax, and the 
question of his getting a house high or low is an outside 
question, just as it is outside of whatever gas-bill or coal- 
bill may be involved in running the same house. The 
authorities seem at last agreed on this: there has been 
a good deal of fog over it, but it is pretty well cleared up 
now. 

The rental-value tax seems to have all the merits we 
have sought for in a tax, and none of the defects we 
have found. It is also a good one in practice : wherever 
tried (probably longest and widest in England) it has done 
very well. 

IV. Franchise -Tax. 
.on u +u u Now we have left to the last, the con- 

482. Has the char- . ^ . . . r 1 • r . 

acteristics of a sideration oi one class 01 objects 01 tax- 
rea-esate ax. ation — franchises, which we briefly com- 
mended many pages back: we saw (159 b, 159 c) that 
they are peculiarly just objects of taxation, because 
they are usually, in their very nature, really public 
property; and in getting all they yield beyond a rea- 
sonable profit to their promoters, the public is usually 
but getting its own. 

Our general study has shown us still more reasons 
why franchises are good objects of taxation: they can- 
not be hidden or lied about as successfully as most 
personal property, or as incomes and inheritances: for 
there are so few of them that it would cost govern- 
rQent very little thoroughly to investigate their ac- 
counts. True, the managers of franchises spend a great . 



§ 482] Obvious Direct Taxes. 607 

deal in corrupting public officers, but probably no 
amount of taxation could make them spend much more 
in that way than they do now. 

The verdict of experience regarding taxing them is 
that it is done in most countries where universal suf- 
frage does not provide legislatures that the corporations 
can buy; and it is found to be in all respects a good 
tax. The tendency to use' it is increasing rapidly. 

A franchise-tax is a real-estate tax after all, and has 
all the merits of one. The New York legislature so 
decreed in 1890, and it is plainly so if we take into 
consideration the special value of the real estate for 
the purpose of the franchise. But of course it would 
not do to tax a railroad's long line as if it were to be 
used for farming: or the long strip occupied by a gas- 
pipe, as if it were to be used to build a house on: each 
gets its value, just as other real estate does, from the 
size, shape and location that fit it for its purpose: 
it would not do to tax a Wall Street corner according 
to its value for residence purposes, or a Fifth Avenue 
lot according to its value for stockbrokers' offices, or 
either for its value for farming; any more than it 
would do to tax a farm for its value for building jewelry- 
stores. 

In fact, then, the chief value of a franchise consists 
in its ownership of its peculiar real estate, or of peculiar 
privileges connected with peculiar real estate. 

No matter what the shape of the real estate used, 
may be, it is generally more valuable for its purposes, 
than all the rest of the corporation's property. As 
Mr. Shearman points out, as soon as a street railroad 
gets its franchise, it generally bonds it for many times 
what its rails and rolling-stock cost. So it is with gas- 
lines and water-lines and franchises generally. 



CHAPTER XLIL 

DOUBLE TAXATION. 

483. Taxation of Suppose a real-estate owner gives a 
mortgages. mortgage. Should government tax the 

mortgage in the hands of the man who holds it ? 

Plainly not, if government continues to 
i^^ebt^'notZ^uaufe, ^^^ '^^^ land its full amount : the mortgage 
created no new value, and for this reason, 
New Jersey, Idaho and probably some other states 
exempt mortgages altogether, and New York has just 
passed a law imposing on them only a small recording 
tax. If the government taxes the mortgage, and taxes 
the land as much as before, it taxes on more value 
than before, without there being any new value to 
pay the tax; in other words, it would be taxing some 
of the old value twice, which, in several states, is uncon- 
stitutional. 

At first glance it appears that the land is not worth 
to its owner as much as before, but it really is, unless 
and until it is foreclosed: he still retains the use and 
income of it, and therefore is in as good condition, 
so far as concerns the land, to pay the tax as he was 
before mortgaging. 

But now he has to pay the interest on his mortgage 
too. But also the mortgage has brought him the money 
to earn that interest, and, he thinks, a profit besides, 
or he would not have made the mortgage. 

Then he should pay taxes on the money too, if the 
money is taxed: he alone has it in possession and 
use to earn the taxes with. He has in possession and 

608 



§ 483 ^] Double Taxation. 609 

use all the real estate and all the money, and of course 

should pay all the taxes. 

.„„,., . , „ The very bottom principle of sound taxa" 

A83 (0). and ualue . , -^ -f J^ ' 

alone should be tton, ts that the toxcs shall be paid by the 
person holding the property which produces 
the wherewithal to pay them. That is really ''taxing at 
the source ' ' . 

We seem to have made out that the mortgagor has 
everything concerned, and such is the case. The 
mortgagee has nothing but a claim. He cannot earn 
anything to pay taxes with that. He has parted 
with his money, and it is the business of the man w^ho 
has that, to make it earn its taxes, as well as its 
interest. 

But here is the mortgagee in receipt of an income. 
Should not he pay taxes on that? The question de- 
pends upon whether the source of the income has 
already paid its taxes (470 e). We have just seen that 
it ought to, as everything that pays taxes ought to, 
through the party that makes it earn them — "at the 
source". 

But suppose the mortgagee is taxed, as he very 
often is, who should pay the tax? 

It is perfectly plain that nobody should. But where 
somebody is made to, the question of who, is gen- 
-00/ , /i^ 4. erallv made as broad as it is long:, because 

483 (c). Mortgagor , J . -, . i 

generally pays tax m statcs whcrc mortgagees are taxed, the 
^' mortgagor generally has to pay the mort- 

gagee a rate high enough to cover ordinary interest plus 
the tax. Mortgagors have to pay six per cent, in Ver- 
mont, where mortgages are taxed, while, till lately, 
they have had to pay but four or five in New York, 
where the law taxing mortgages was a dead letter. 
There was a new enactment in 1905, however, which 
wrought great hardship and obstructed improvement, 
and, as already said, it was repealed in 1905. Mortgage 
taxation is somietimes called "as broad as it is long", 
but it is more than that: for in Verm.ont, California and 
other states where mortgages are taxed, the mortgagor, 
theoretically at least, has to pay not only his high 



6io Taxation. ] [§ 483 c 

interest, but also on the full valuation of the real estate, 
just as before the mortgage, and yet again on the 
money in his hands, or on whatever he may have invested 
it in. But the number of states where that occurs is 
diminishing: for the victims of course take part in the 
general evasion of personal-property taxes, and people 
are becoming alive to the injustice of it. Hence, more 
and more of the states which tax mortgages, are deduct- 
ing them from the valuation of real estate. 
483 w. Mortqage ^^^^ pcople are deceived by the rea- 
not properly Real souing that a mortgage is an interest in 
^^*"*^' real estate, and fairly taxable as real es- 

tate, and in fact, mortgages and real estate have logic- 
ally and historically (83) enough features in common 
to deceive a good many persons. But as long as the 
mortgagor is in possession, the mortgage is only a 
right to acquire an interest in the real estate if the loan 
is not paid. 

483 re;. In differ- It sometimes happens that a man living 
ent states. {^ q^ state whcre personal property is taxed, 

owns a mortgage on a piece of property in another state 
— it may be on a piece of private property, or it may 
be the bond of a corporation, and the mortgage is taxed 
in the state where the property is ; and suppose that the 
owner of the mortgage, living in a different state, is 
also taxed on it as personal property. Some help for 
this state of affairs may have been recently given by 
the United States Supreme Court in holding that a state 
can tax only property, business and persons within its 
borders. Yet the first state can hold that the mortgage 
is within its borders, and the second state can hold that 
the man is within its. More help is in people gradually 
realizing that as long as a state looks for revenue from 
all personal property owned by its residents, no matter 
where situated, victims of such laws are apt to move 
to more modern states. It is perhaps as much to save 
money as to spend it, that so many millionaires from 
all over the country move to the city of New York, 
where, despite the law which works the most outrageous 



§ 4^3 /] Double Taxation. 6ii 

injustices on women and children, there is really little 
taxation of personal property in the hands of men who 
can take care of themselves. 

Of course if a man owns mortgages in California, and 
likes to enjoy his wealth in New York, he should pay 
taxes there for the privilege ; and he cannot avoid paying. 
Taxes on most things he buys, and on the stores they 
come from, will inevitably be shifted to him, as is 
proved by the high prices of everything in New York. 
Of course he could also be made to pay rental-value tax, 
if New York were yet wise enough to use that tax. We 
saw something like this when we were discussing indirect 
taxes on personalty (464) — that a tax can be shifted 
most readily upon those who will have, and those 
who must have. 

If a man in a state where personal property is taxed, 
owns stock of a bank in another state, he is apt to 
have to pay on it twice: the bank pays once, and he 
often pays again. 

It is plain how a state can collect taxes from resi- 
dent-corporations, but it is not so plain how it can 
collect on a mortgage when the mortgagee lives in 
another state: for he does not own the land. As 
already explained, it is unscientific as well as unjust, 
to collect on it at all, but if the blunder is made, the 
state can collect on the mortgage just as it collects 
on the fee simple (88) of the same land when the owner 
lives in another state. But if it collects taxes on 
the mortgage by selling the land, it would compel the 
mortgagor to pay the mortgagee's taxes or lose his 
own equity of redemption (83). That is remedied, in 
Massachusetts, California, Colorado and New Zealand — 
483 r/A Letting ^Y letting the mortgagor pav any taxes 
mortgagor pay Outstanding whcu his interest is due,' and 
mortgagee s tax. (^Q(^■^J^Q.^ them from the interest. Altho, 

as said above, he would have to pay a rate of interest 
high enough to cover those taxes; at worst, if the sys- 
tem were made consistent all around, by taxing the 
mortgage value but once, he would not have to pay, 



6i2 Taxation. [§ 483/ 

as he sometimes does now, on the mortgage, on the 
money in his hands, and on the full fee of his farm, 
but only on the equity of redemption. 
483 (g). conciu- Our conclusion, then, is that if the holder 

^'°"- of land owes a debt which can. be definitely 

collected from that land, he should pay the full taxes 
as long as he has the use of it. If the creditor is taxed 
on the claim, the debtor will generally have to pay that 
tax too, in which case his land should be exempted 
from payment, to the amount which is the subject of the 
claim. Hence, until the world outgrows the taxation 
of personal property, the simplest way with mortgaged 
property, is to have the mortgagor pay only on his equity 
of redemption. It might be more logical to offset the 
mortgage debt against his personal property — against 
the mortgage money which he received, but he may not 
have any personal property : he may have borrowed the 
mortgage money to pay a debt, or may have invested it 
in more real estate, or may have made ducks and drakes 
with it. 

But as affecting the ability of the landowner to pay 
the tax, why should we exempt him if his liability is 
on a mortgage, and not exempt him if his liability 
is on a mere note? A good miany states deduct all 

debts from personalty assessed. But if they do not, 
they have "got to draw the line somewhere". A good 
place to draw it, is at what is so definitely a man's that 
he can sell it. If his land is mortgaged, he can sell 
only the equity. If it is not mortgaged, he can sell 
the whole of it, regardless of his creditors, tho he may 
owe fifty times what it will bring. If all of A's property 
is a piece of real estate, and B holds A's note, but not 
a mortgage, that note can be collected by a forced sale 
of the real estate, just as a mortgage could, but it is 
not so sure an interest in the real estate: because if it 
484, Why tax were a first mortgage, it would be as good 
mortgages and not as an actual Ownership of the land, against 
""^^^"^ all other possible creditors, and would 

probably be worth its face; but if it is a mere note, 
forty-nine other creditors might have just as much 



§ 486] Double Taxation. 613 

interest in the real estate, and not one of the whole 
fifty be able to get five per cent, on his claim. 

Yet there is no subject in taxation about which 
there has been more quarreling and more diverse prac- 
tice. As already said, some states, in making up tax- 
schedules, permit the deduction of all a man's debts 
from all his personal property, but all collect rigidly on 
the full value of his real estate, whether mortgaged or 
not; Massachusetts allows no deduction of debts from 
personal property, but does not tax mortgages twice. 

And there is reason for not exempting debts, beyond 
the necessity of "drawing a line somewhere". In the 
states where debts are exempted, it is astounding how 
many debts in proportion to their assets, some of the 
financial magnates have about listing time, while 
widows and orphans often have no debts at all. 

485. Tax all record- There is a very simple principle which 
ed liens "atthe would reduce this chaos to uniformity, 

source", and deduct .,-, , • . .1 1 ,1 r .1 • ^ 

them from value of Without gomg to the length 01 the smgle 
property. ^^^ — ^ way short of driving taxpayers into 

a modern state to get rid of these old-fashioned double 
taxations. It is to become a modern state, and tax 
only what is of record, and tax it against the recorded 
owner. This is one application of the celebrated 
miaxim to "tax at the source". Then, if the thing 
taxed is a lien on any property, of course that property 
should be pro tanto exempt. But the question would 
be avoided by not taxing liens. 

486. Multiplied Probably the most general form of 
taxation, especially multiplied taxation, is the excises on 

y excises. manufactured articles. Raw materials are 

often taxed, and then the goods taxed again in each 
set of hands they pass through: for instance, trees may 
be taxed as standing timber, as logs, as planks, as 
strips for making spools or awl-handles, and as spools 
or awl -handles. Iron may be taxed as ore in the bed, 
as ore at the furnace, as pig, as bar, as extra-tempered 
fine small steel, as jackknives, or as watch-springs, and 
in each one of these forms, after being taxed at the 



6i4 Taxation. [§486 

factory, it may be taxed again in wholesalers' hands, 
again in retailers' hands, and again in consumers' 
hands. Moreover, should it stay in any of these hands 
over a year, it may be taxed again, and in consumers' 
hands taxed every year till it rusts. Verily, manifold 
are the ways of taxation of personal property! As 
long as "mankind is a fool" (to quote Carlyle) — or at 
least American mankind (no other civilized mankind 
is enough of a fool to attempt the direct taxation of 
personal property), the only remedy is to "tax at the 
source" — tax it at the factory, and then stop. 

But what factory — logging-camp, sawmill, turning- 
mill, spool-factory, or where? At each one, if you 
want to : each one adds a new value beside w^hich 
the old value is often not worth considering. But do 
not tax the completed product again in the hands of 
dealers or users. If the tax on iron-ore is .paid over 
again in a watch-spring; or that on logs, in a spool, 
the amount of material is so trifling that it makes no 
appreciable difference. It is only in connection with 
the duplication up to the finished product, which is 
serious, that this sort of tax is generally worth noticing. 

Not all cases of duplicated or multiplied taxation 
are equally objectionable with those we have considered ; 
some are even generally approved — such, for instance, 
as taxes on things that people are in danger of using 
too much of, like liquors and tobacco. There are 
generally excises on their production, and duties on their 
importation, and additional taxes on dealing in them. 
There is still another justification for this sort of du- 
plicated taxation, that there is not for taxing mort- 
gages. The excise-taxes quite generally distribute 
themselves, while those on real estate, whether on fee 
or on the mere possibility of an estate, which is secured 
by a mortgage, may not distribute themselves as readily. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ON TAXATION. 

Now among the various kinds of taxation that we 
have considered, with the glaring objections to the 
worst, and the perplexities, inconsistencies and occa- 
sional injustices of even the best, certainly there is not 
one alone which can be depended upon, at least until 
487 Perfect taxa- ^"^^^^ nature improves. Taxation is 
tion'not for imper- after all mainly a matter of psychology: 
feet people. -^ ^^g^ ^^ adapted to the people. Sources 

of revenue run all the . way from lotteries to land — the 
semi -barbarian at one end, and a civilization not yet 
fully realized at the other. A wise system of taxation 
must consider the weaknesses of human nature, and 
also the various complexities arising from the fact that 
men often own property under governments different 
from those they live under. 

488. Vampire-taxes ^s duties and exciscs distribute them- 
needed now. selves SO generally, and are paid with so 

little inconvenience, it is generally necessary, in the 
present state of human nature, to use them. But 
they should be used with great simplicity, to save 
expense in assessing and collecting; with great caution 
against corruption by interests seeking "protection"; 
and mainly on luxuries, so that the poor man will not be 
paying taxes on everything he buys. Yet it is eminently 

desirable that the poor man have an 
ai-vcUue^Tax m"ay interest in keeping taxes low, and such in- 
^^i^^ateiy replace tercst is not kept vcry wide awake by a 

vampire-tax: one object of such a tax is 

615 



6i6 Taxation. [§ 688 a 

to keep the interest asleep — its * ' pinions fan the wound 
it makes ". 

Yet of course it is not desirable to take away the 
vampire-taxes, and depend on others that are even 
worse : a small minority of citizens have any real CvState ; 
and income, succession or personal-property taxes are 
poor substitutes for even vampire-taxes: the fire is 
worse than the frying-pan, as remarked at least once 
before in these discussions. But if a man does not own 

real estate, he pays rent, and the rental-value tax will 
keep him much more alive to his political duties than 
the vampire-taxes can, besides being a better tax in 
every other way. 

Until we are educated up to doing without the vam- 
pire-taxes, we can learn from England in using them. 
She selects a few articles — mainly luxuries on which peo- 
ple will readily pay most, and confines the duties and 
excises to them; and it works very well. The trouble 
is that the number of duties and excises cannot be 
kept small: all interests clamor for protection in the 
tariff; and in every exigency, a finance minister (in a 
country civilized enough to have one : we are not) tends 
to clap on a new excise. One cannot read far into the 
subject without meeting the Dutchman's thirty taxes 
in a plate of soup. Yet there has been some improve- 
ment since his day, in countries like England, where 
legislators are generally chosen from the educated 
classes, and have read the world's experience. 

Except in young countries, or in tariff wars, the tariff 
should be only on articles that cannot be produced at 
home: this prevents a number of interests from cor- 
rupting legislation, and trading " protection " with each 
other. 

489. Inquisition- I^^ Spite of the possible necessity of 

taxes intolerable, tolerating indirect taxes because of the 
weaknesses of human nature, tariff-taxes and excise- 
taxes have not only the faults of the vampire-taxes, 
but those of the inquisition-taxes too; and when duties 
become "protective", they become oppressive in the 
bargain. Protection is the very worst form of taxa- 



§49°^] Stimmary and Conclusions. 617 

tion. While income, inheritance and personal -property- 
taxes are thoroughly inquisitorial, corrupting and im- 
practicable, yield relatively little, cost m.uch to collect, 
and so should never be used except in dire necessity, if, 
then, they are nevertheless better than protective taxes. 

490r The remote Now after making all these concessions 

'<^^^'' to the hard facts of human nature, let us 

seek a little ghmpse of the ideal — of what may ulti- 
mately come, as human nature improves. We have 
seen that Evolution seems to tend to establish, to the 
exclusion of others, taxes on the land, including those 
on franchises. If land should be taxed more than 
other things, the tax wotild be paid from the rent 
and the profits of managing the labor upon it, not from 
the wages of the labor: wages must be kept up to 
the market rate, or labor would not go upon the land: 
so must the profits of ability, for the same reason. 
If the tax were so heavy as to eat into wages and 
profits, the land would be abandoned unless the taxes 
were lowered. The taxes, then, must, in the long 
run, come out of the rent. Now we have seen that 
the rent comes from the bounty of Nature — from suffi- 
490 Ca;. Nature cicut fertility, or special fitness for other 
fjays some taxes, yxse, to givc a rctum abovc wages and 
profits. Then, in the very last resort, the bounty of 
Nature pa3^s the tax on land. 

A franchise-tax is paid by something very like the 
same thing. As we have already seen, the value of a 
franchise is mainly in its real estate; and anyhow, what- 
ever an enterprise pays above wages and ordinary profits, 
must in the long run come from some unusual advantage 
that is enough of a monopoly to prevent Ability rush- 
ing in to compete for the profits. Now, nobody 
consciously creates those monopolistic profits of an 
ordinary franchise: as we have seen, the profits of a 
railway or water company, for instance, constantly 
tend to increase, long after wages and ordinary busi- 
ness profits are paid, by the mere clustering of people 
who simply mind their own business, without paying 



6i8 Taxation. , [§4900 

the franchises in question any attention but that of 
use. As intimated before, so far as any human effort 
is concerned, the excessive profits of sucli franchises 
are as much a bounty of Nature, as the rent of land is. 

It seems plain, then, that the evolution of taxation 
seems to have been toward restricting it to land and 
franchises, and that such taxes are paid by the bounty 
of Nature. 

But the question arises whether enough could be 
got from these sources. It is pretty hard to tell 
490 (b). and can from what othcr sources many taxes ulti- 
pay all. matcly come now ; only we get them in 

such devious ways that the friction and labor of getting 
them are a frightful burden. 

490 re;. Aques- Profcssor Seager (Introduction to Eco- 
tionabie objection, nomics) says I ' ' The more intelligent and 
the more social the population becomes, the keener will 
be its appreciation of the common needs, and the larger 
the fiscal requirements of the government which minister 
to such needs, but these again have no connection with 
the size of the rent-fund." His boldness in denial 
should perhaps check me from boldness in assertion. 
Proof either way is not possible, but I am ready to rest 
the case on the assertion that "the more intelligent and 
the more social the population becomes", the greater 
inevitably will he ''the size of the rent- fund", and vice 
versa, each being both cause and effect. From his bold 
assertion, he deduces very logically that "the contention 
that a tax on rent would by itself meet all of the require- 
ments of government at all times may thus be dis- 
missed as visionary ", while from my assertion I deduce 
just the opposite, tho what I would deduce regard- 
ing times and place generally, there would be needless 
temerity in asserting of all. 

My deduction, however, is backed up by the facts tliat 
in many communities of all kinds, urban and rural, the 
tax on personal property has, for many reasons and in 
many ways, been virtually abandoned; and that those 
communities have never found any difficulty in getting 
needed revenue from the land and its improvements; 



§ 490 <^] Summary and Conclusions. 619 

and this has succeeded in so many and so various 
communities, that there are many reasons for beheving 
that it could succeed in virtually all. It is true, however, 
that the taxes raised as above described, have never 
included those for our national government. The ques- 
tion whether they too could be included in the system, 
is outside the range of experience, and will be answered 
by each thinker in accordance with his convictions on 
collateral points. 

A90(d). The future lu regard to the future of taxation, all 
of taxation. ^j^^^g opeus Up a bright vision. If taxes 

enough for all needs could thus be paid from the bounty 
of Nature (and there seems reason to think they could), 
v/e would he rid of the nuisances of custom-houses; of 
the injustices, business uncertainties and unutterable 
corruptions of the Protective System; of the duplica- 
tions, petty annoyances, restraints and impediments 
to business in all excise and stamp taxes; of the 
obstructions to business occasioned, and the perjury 
invited, by all personal, succession and income taxes; 
of the obstacles to development of the country, in all 
taxes on buildings and improvements ; of the aid to the 
niggard's saving, and the obstruction to elegant living 
and generous hospitality involved even in so good a tax 
as that on rental value; and of the army of place- 
holders necessary to collect all these taxes. 

The ideal seems to be to tax no human effort or its 
results, but to pay the expenses of government from 
the bounty of nature. 

And yet, despite the obvious truths just recounted, 
ignorance and habit so befog tax commissions generally 
that instead of applying their ingenuity to getting the 
taxes onto the land, they generally spend their time 
monkeying (I use the word deliberately) with the old in- 
quisitorial and vampire schemes, and devising new forms 
of them. An honorable exception to this, in one particu- 
lar, was indicated in the minority report of the New York 
commission before alluded to: it recommended a "hab- 
itation" tax — a better name for the excellent "rental- 



620 Taxation. [§ 490 cf 

value" tax of England. But as already said, the com- 
mittee boggled its recommendation by wanting the land- 
lord to collect and pay it over, altho the landlord, as 
such, has, in principle, nothing whatever to do with 
the tax be^^ond owning the property which determines 
its amount. 

490 re;. No hard- True, the land-taxes would come out of 
shipto landowners, ^j^^^ portion of the bounty of Nature 
which has been secured by the landowners, but as 
already shown (472 e, 472 /), taking taxes from it, 
instead of from personal property, would not make 
nearly all the difference to those people, that at first 
sight it seems to : generally, they would be merely paying 
from one pocket instead of several, and it looks as if the 
proceeding, while doing them little, if any, harm, 
would be vastly to the advantage of the community in 
general. The vast increase of the tax return that 
could properly be had from the franchises, would tend 
to keep down the burden on the landowner. Consider- 
ing that, and the vampire and inquisition taxes which 
owners of ordinary real estate already pay in addition 
to the realty-tax, and the expense of collecting them, 
it is probable that the ideal system w^ould materially 
reduce their present burdens. At all events, as 
already said: many of the landlords, including the most 
intelligent portion, seem ready to have all taxation 
derived from their real estate. They want the direct tax 
on personal property removed, they are generally op- 
posed to income and succession taxes, and not a few 
of them are opposed to tariff and excise taxes. 

490 (f). Amorti- And yct it is true that each tax put on 
^«^'0'^' a piece of real estate, lessens its selling 

value. The tax is amortized, as they call it— deadened 
— into the value of the real estate. A tax of I5 a 
year, for instance, would amortize the value of the 
estate about a hundred dollars, as it is 5 per cent, income 
from a hundred dollars. But as real estate in the set- 
tled portions of the country has been paying a larger 
and larger share of the taxes for a long time, in many 



§49°^] Summary and Conclusions. 621 

places its tax burden must be pretty much amortized 
already. And yet the value of real estate seems to 
advance, on the whole, faster than amortization has 
pulled it down — and especially in the very places where 
it pays the largest share of the taxes. 

It looks as if this process is to go farther — as if 
people, as they get wiser, are going to throw off more 
and more of the stupid taxes, and real estate will have 
to bear more and more, except as franchises relieve it. 

But will real estate become valueless in conse- 
quence? It certainly has not, so far; and as every- 
thing that benefits the community benefits real estate, 
it seems probable that the removal of the stupid taxes 
will benefit real estate even more than wise taxes will 
harm it, the difference being made up in economy of 
collection, and other economies. 

The effect of the apparently-coming system on the 
poor man's taxes, would be that instead of paying, as 
490 r^;. A boon now, indirect taxes on nearly everything 
to the poor. j^g uscs, he would simply have to pay no 

taxes at all, except as the real-estate tax should distrib- 
ute itself as far as him. It could not help affecting 
his wages favorably, because business, being relieved of 
tariffs, excises, stamps, and taxes on plant and goods, 
would flourish better; the demand for labor would con- 
sequently be better, and so work would be steadier and 
wages higher. 

But the argument which has led up to this bright 
picture, may seem to yield the claim of Henry George 
that government has a right to take all economic 
rent by taxation. Yet it really does not: for noth- 
ing in it involves government taking more than its legiti- 
mate needs. George claimed that it should take all, 
and use the excess over legitimate needs, in pauperizing 
the community. In addition to that disastrous effect, 
would be the one probably equally disastrous, of destroy- 
ing all the advantages which we have seen to be inherent 
in private ownership of land, and which we have also 
seen that some of the loudest of the alleged followers 
of Henry George also make the same claim for. 



622 Taxation. ^ [§ 490 /j 

Yet a sole dependence on real-estate and franchise 
taxes is open to one very serious objection that was 
raised against indirect taxes : unless a man 
d'udi'^ai "citizens' owucd land or sharcs in a franchise cor- 
poration, his stake in economical govern- 
ment would seem to him even less than under a system 
of purely indirect taxation. Under that, he may not 
know he is taxed; but under our new ideal system, he 
would not be taxed at all, except so far as real-estate 
taxes may be diffused to him. The best way to meet 
this difficulty would be to encourage and help each man 
to own at least his home, and meanwhile to bring in the 
best of the other taxes we have examined — ^the rental- 
value tax — ^to make ever}^ voter pay a tax according to 
his rate of living, whether he lives in a palace or an 
attic — to make him realize that he has a stake in the 
government, if it is but a dollar a year. 

True, there are numbers of sovereign American citi- 
zens whose vote counts as much as anybody's, who 
never have as much at a time as a dollar to pay a tax 
with. Perhaps it is time to have their vote stop 
"counting as much as anybody's" — to have them stop 
disposing of other people's money: for the frightful 
wastes and stupidities in our taxation are largely due 
to their votes. 

491. Causes of Of course the adoption of a system of 

^^eiay. taxation promising so much good, is ob- 

structed by the same ignorance and stupidity which 
m (a). Ignorance obstruct most good things. Morcovcr, the 
and seif-seeiiing. gystem docs not promisc much immediate 
good to the owners of franchises, and ..they own most 
of the legislatures. Of course landowners would favor 
the single land-tax still more if they were sure of liberal 
franchise-taxes to lessen their own. But many land- 
owners, especially the farmers, will obstruct it anyhow, 
until they understand it better. It is also opposed 
by a stronger and better organized and more interested 
element than the farmers or, perhaps, the franchise- 
owners, namely, the manuf act hirers. They spend enor- 
mous sums in keeping up the so-called protective system. 



§491^] Sttmmary and Conclusions. . 623 

491 (b). In the u. s. But there is a firmer obstacle than even 
Constitution. j-^^q protective system, to the national 

government taxing land. 

As we saw (466 c), the National Constitution op- 
poses it, and it is probably harder to amend our 
National Constitution (Art. V) than even to get rid of 
the protective system. Yet constitutional amendments 
are possible, with the growth of wisdom, and some- 
times- in spite of it. Moreover, a tariff system is not 
necessarily a so-called "protective" one, as Great 
Britain has shown, tho it is very hard to prevent its 
becoming so. 

The great hope for the future is in more education — 
moral as well as economic. It is sad, tho, that so 
much of it must still come, as perhaps the most valu- 
able education generally does, through struggle and 
waste. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

GENERAL SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 

We have merely touched the otitHnes of 
492. General con- the compHcated questions we have treated : 

elusions regarding . ^. ^ . ^ r xi i ■ j. 

the Civic Relations, the discussion ot them has run into 

hbraries, and is increasing at a geometric 
rate. Then we should expect them to be handled 
by the half-educated men who compose the majority 
of our legislatures, just as they have been handled 
since the debt for the civil war increased their diffi- 
culty — with probably less wisdom and more corrup- 
tion than in any other nation among the great powers. 
The only remedy is to increase the 
fo^r^expery."^^^'°"^ respect for knowledge, and the scorn of 

corruption, and to get legislatures in the 
way of leaving such questions to expert and faithful 
men, even if, as they even nov/ are sometimes wise 
enough to, they have to call upon commissions chosen 
outside of their own members. As we saw (420), it 
is becoming more and more the custom to leave matters 
requiring expert knowledge, in the hands of expert com- 
missions; and it is becoming recognized here and there, 
as indicated by John Stuart Mill, that the ideal govern- 
ment toward which society seems tending, will consist 
mainly of a number of bodies of experts acting under 
a central administration distinguished for judgment and 
executive capacity, rather than for expert knowledge. 
Probably the large miscellaneous legislative assemblies 
will eventually disappear. Already their sittings begin 
to the regret of the intelligent, and end to their relief. 

624 



§ 494 b] General Sttmmary and Conclusions. 625 

In some places where the sessions of the legislatures 
were once annual, they have already been made biennial ; 
and so great an authority as the late Mr. Godkin favored 
their entire abolition. 

494. Evolution of L^'t US Supplement our detailed atten- 
the Civic Relations, tion to the Civic Relations by a review 
of the ground we have been over, and a few general 
conclusions that cover it all. 

From ancestors very low in the scale of being — igno- 
rant, improvident, lazy, unmoral and solitary, have 
been evolved civilized men — with knowledge, fore- 
thought, energy, morality and the inestimable advan- 
tages of civil life. But we seem to have as yet reached, 
at best, a very humble stage of the evolution, and that 
best has been reached by but few: the vast majority of 
mankind are still, by comparison with the few in ad- 
vance, ignorant, improvident, and (the worst of them) 
lazy, dishonest, and even solitary — their hands against 
every man, and every man's hands against them. 

The control of the means of happiness — largely 
included under the name of wealth, is of course, despite 
exceptions, mainly in the hands of the few possessing 
knowledge, forethought, energy and honesty. 
494 (a), and of Very naturally those who do not possess 

their problems. wealth , Want it ; and such of them as can 
exercise the virtues which produce it, generally 
get it: most of those who have it, have produced 
it for themselves, tho a few have inherited or stolen 
it from the producers. But the unfortunate majority 
who lack the wealth-producing virtues, naturally wish 
to get the wealth without exercising the virtues — 
to make water run upward without supplying the 
power — to get something out of nothing; and so 
they, and many half-reasoning sympathizers, have in- 
vented all sorts of impossible schemes of the perpetual- 
motion order, for accomplishing that result. 
494 rw. Rapid P^ecent times have been preeminently 

accumulation of the timcs of nostrums : for the average 
man has been hfted out of the sodden 



626 General Summary and Conchtsions. [§4946 

ignorance and indifference of a century ago, into some 
conception of better conditions, some hope of obtaining 
them, and abundant readiness to attempt any way of 
doing so that may dazzle his attention. He has been 
givena vote, too, and, tho he generally has no more idea 
of what to do with it than if it were a spectroscope, he is 
very full of the idea that with it he can work miracles. 

While he is often averse to taking from those who have 
more, unless he disguise the process, even to himself, 
by some sophistry, he is very ready for any scheme 
under such disguise ; and his recent ' ' little learning ' ' and 
the wide diffusion of it, has spread many sophistries and 
schemes based on them. 

Yet the sympathies must be dull which do not give any 
response to his efforts. It seems very hard that to 
only one m.an in many should be open the enjoyment 
of art and literature and refined society ; but it is surely 
better that they should exist for the few than that 
they should not exist at all; and such, so far, has been 
Nature's way. But through the human agents she has 
evolved, she is spreading these advantages at a rate 
which has lately increased to astonish us, and which, 
it is perhaps not too much to say, must in a time that 
we can foresee, include all men. There is overwhelming 
evidence in schools, libraries, settlements, legal-aid 
societies and other benefactions, that the more able 
men do respond to the need of the less able, and are 
eager to aid them in all efforts that are reasonable and 
hopeful. Indeed, efforts that are foolish, hopeless, 
even destructive and" suicidal, have engaged the support 
of many of the well-to-do whose sympathies are stronger 
than their intelligence. 

495. The Labor Impatient as cool reason may be with 

"•"•■"s*' it all, there is something pathetic about it: 

for many of the enthusiasts are as sincere in their 
faith, and as ready to sacrifice themselves for it, as 
any other fanatics have ever been for theirs. 
496 The labor "^^^ under all these theories is a ques- 

questionarealques- tion rooted in much deeper soil than the 
lion for real reason ghallow inventions of the dreamer and 



§ 497] General Summary and Conclusions. 627 

the quack. The "labor question" is a very real strug- 
gle for shares of a product that must be divided, and a 
struggle that will last as long — which will probably 
be very long indeed — as men are too near-sighted to 
see the broadest self-interest in the general interest. 
In this real struggle, the unreal remedy must dominate 
the vulgar mind — the remedy, as so often said, of get- 
ting wages higher than the equation of supply and 
demand. That the trade-unions have done great ser- 
vice, and may yet do great service, in keeping wages 
up to the point of equation, is undoubted; but they 
have lost all sight of that intention, and think only of 
forcing wages to any height attainable through any 
means, no matter what bruises, what fatal over- 
strains, and what falls- may result. 

497. Aggression Originally combined against the em- 
begets aggression, ployers' aggressions, the workmen have 
themselves become the aggressors. The employers are 
now combining against the workmen's aggressions, 
and soon will be in renewed danger of becoming the 
aggressors themselves. Meanwhile, the community in 
general is combining against the aggressions of both, 
and in that combination are even some of the com- 
batants on both sides: so clearly can men see the 
wrong in others' acts which they are bhnd to in their 
own. The waste on both sides is frightful, but it must 
gradually force a recognition that the wisest policy for 
both sides is to facilitate the operation of supply and 
demand, instead of opposing it; and to help each other 
instead of hindering each other. With this recog- 
nition, must gradually emerge conditions under which 
wages will be so high that the productive power of the 
men will be at its best; and so low that labor and its 
resulting commodities can be obtained, by laborers and 
all, as cheaply as our control of Nature's forces permits. 
Society will gradually obtain its rightful control of 
natural monopolies, and secure that no artificial 
monopoly of either labor or capital shall stand in the 
way of the general good — :that no monopoly of either 
mines or miners' labor shall stop the supply of fuel; 



628 General Summary and Conclusions. [§497 

that no monopoly of either food or food-producing 
labor shall limit the supply of food; that no monopoly 
of either any good thing or the labor supplying any 
good thing shall limit the availability of that good 
thing. The strength of one of the opposing forces 
will continue at times to force conditions too far one 
way, then the other force will drive them too far the 
other way; but those wielding the forces, and those 
affected by them, are fast learning through bitter 
experience, where the points of reason lie, and the 
movements beyond them on either side must gradu- 
ally grow less and less. 

Meanwhile the mistaken schemes not only obstruct 
the production of wealth, and make money flow in 
the wrong direction — from the poor to the rich, rather 
than from the rich to the poor, but they befog the 
popular intelligence, and obscure the fact that, so far 
as happiness comes from anything but a clear con- 
science, a contented mind and a loving heart, it comes 
from knowledge, forethought, energy, honesty and the 
political freedom which can be had only from civic 
enlightenment and the strict performance of public 
duty: thus the mistaken schemes are among the chief 
obstacles to the improvement of government. 

497 (a;. Evolution Among beasts and very primitive men, 
of vices in gov- whcrc there is no wisdom and no patriot- 
ism, government is of course that of the 
strongest. Later, cunning plays some part; and, in 
time, higher forms of wisdom come in, and those pos- 
sessing military and civic ability gradually share in the 
government. But lately the need of capacity in direct- 
ing government, has gradually been ignored, because of 
reactions against tyranny, because of sentimentalism, 
and of competition between parties for popular votes. 
While on one hand, as we have seen, public education is 
maintained at enormous expense on the ground that 
an ignorant man is not fit to vote, on the other hand, 
demagogues vie with each other in devices to enable 
men who cannot even read, to cast the ignorant vote on 



§499 <^] General Summary and Conclusions. 629 

which the demagogue depends; and many sentimen- 
tahsts not intentionally demagogues cooperate with 
them. In the extreme instances — America and France, 
suffrage has become universal: the incapable majority 
now exercise the power, except as a capable minority 
can. influence them; and consequently the governments 
(especially many of the local American ones) are vastly 
more stupid and corrupt than those of the other nations 
anywhere near the same intellectual and moral plane in 
other respects. Undoubtedly some believed that in 
the ballot — the standard of liberty, there was magic to 
enlighten and convert all who touched it. But experience 
has not increased the belief. And now that standard 
has been flung into the ranks of the enemy, and there 
it stays. 

498. Improve suf- How to rescue it, seems an almost in- 
^''■^S^' soluble question. Possibly it can be done 
by making those incapable of appreciating it, incapa- 
ble of holding it; certainly it could be done by mak- 
ing more of those holding it, capable of appreciating 
it. Yet the question does not even present itself to 
the increasing number of those who dream of a per- 
fect world of imperfect men. But in spite of them, 
the question is constantly demanding solution, and if 
Spencer's expectations regarding socialism (31 a) are 
realized, the solution will only be reached through 
blood. But such pessimistic fears are not inevitable. 
Already a reaction back to limited suffrage has been 
forced upon some of our states, and there are a good 
many indications that that reaction will spread. But, 
better still, there is a degree of attention paid to the 
Civic Relations that was not dreamed of a generation 
ago; and this is especially the case in the universities, 
whence the education must inevitably filter downward. 

499. Evolution not Notwithstanding all discouragements, we 
all negative. may recognize many other grounds for 
s//e /o^ a/ea/tJi^" hopc. The vcry desire for wealth, de- 
beneficiai. Spite all the cvils it has brought, has done 
more to evolve the virtues which produce wealth, than 
all other agencies put together; and also, by a strange 



630 Ge:ieral Summary a.nd Conclusions. [§499 a 

paradox, the absence of wealth has done as much to 
evolve, in both rich and poor, virtues nobler than even 
those which create wealth — sympathy, generosity, 
philanthropy. Let us reflect, too, that the difficulties 
of good government have been equally powerful in 
developing the other civic virtues. 

I confess that, having started with a 
^Jefor'exi'stence^' faith that progrcss can be hoped for only 
ceasing u^ be a througli the Struggle for existence and the 
survival of the fittest, this appearing to be 
the only course supported by natural law, I have come 
to realize that with the evolution of intelligence and 
sympathy, standards of fitness to survive have mate- 
rially changed, and that the struggle for existence has 
materially changed with them. Nov/ the struggle of 
brute force has become a struggle of intelligence, and 
even a competition in honesty and amiability: the 
wide industry of commercial traveling is largely a 
competition in amiability and personal agreeableness ; 
the business houses that can most be depended upon, 
are those which oftenest succeed. With complexity of 
industry has come interchange of function, and with 
that, even sometimes a competition in mutual ser- 
vice: for instance, the hotels do what they can to 
help the railroads and amusements, while the rail- 
roads and amusements do what they can to help the 
hotels. The vast majority of people have long got the 
very best in their lives, not by struggling with all others 
for food and shelter, but by mutual support. As soon 
as the family was evolved, the struggle was suspended 
between the members of it, and turned into that mutual 
support. This process soon embraced the clan, and 
then spread into the tribe and nation. Very early, 
the benefits of security and order were obtained by 
supporting, not struggling against, rulers, generals and 
priests. And as literature and art and science and edu- 
cation are evolved, the original contribution to sup- 
port the ruler is distributed among a great mass of 
government officials, and among diplomats and students 



§ 499 ^] General Summary and Conclusions. 631 

a.nd teachers of political science ; while the contribution 
to support the priest is likewise shared by those students 
and teachers, as well as by authors, actors, musicians 
and other artists of all descriptions. And while the 
reflective student will realize that members of these 
groups still are condemned to the struggle for existence 
among themselves, that struggle is virtually only on 
the fringes of the groups — among the members whose 
claim to positions in the groups is doubtful; and he 
will also realize that even this struggle is not "red in 
tooth and claw", but a competition as to who shall 
discover the best truth, or teach it best, write best, 
sing best, act best, paint best. 

499 re;. Wisdom Even in the world where the food and 
and sympathy drink comc from, the survivor is not the 
gaining con ro . strongest brutc, but the wiscst and often 
the gentlest and kindest man, to provide for whose 
material wants is often the very salvation of men better 
fitted than he to survive in the merely physical struggle. 
On the other hand, through the reciprocation of this 
man, the world is progressing, in spite of its being 
sometimes held back by his using his superior intelli- 
gence to despoil others. But generally he uses it to 
devise work for them, to organize them, to get the 
most possible out of them by caring for them, not by 
consuming them; to dispose of the product so that 
they can get the greatest variety and amount of goods 
in exchange ; and to share with them the surplus which 
his talents secure, in better housing and means of recre- 
ation, instruction and entertainment. 

How far these shall be his voluntary gifts 
not btW'-cedf'^" administered under his direction, and how 
far the cost of them shall be taken from 
him and administered by the state, is a complex and 
difficult question. As a fact, however, whether they 
come by taxation or by gift, they come from him. 
The question is how to get the most of them out of him. 
They will not come at all if he is discouraged from 
producing the wherewithal. There is no other source 
of them under heaven but him. Tax him in the hope 



632 General Summary and Conclusions. [§ 49 o<:/ 

of dividing his large share of production, in the shape 
of government gratuities, among those who produce 
less, and you discourage his production; banish him 
by taxation, as he has already been banished from 
more than one place, and the place reverts to primi- 
tive conditions: probably his energy cannot be sup- 
pressed by robbing him, but will simply be driven else- 
where. But withdraw his guidance in any way, unless 
he appear again, in a new incarnation of the divine, 
those he guided revert only to primitive production. 
499 re;. Their Yet it is for him, and for those whose 

necess'ary creed, studies fit them to act with him in the 
shaping of wise policies, to dwell on the old old truth 
illustrated in all forms and stages of human evolution, 
that the only way for the strong and wise to make 
their own prosperity and opportunities secure, is to 
make the state which protects them, a state of en- 
lightened, thrifty, virtuous, and therefore prosperous, 
happy and contented people. 



INDEX. 



(References are to pages.) 



Ability (5^^ a/so capital; en- 
terpriser; wealth), a source 
of property, 42, 44 ff.; private 
property in land stimulates, 49 ; 
required in farming, 55; de- 
fined, 87 ; product varies with, 
87, 105; wages vary with, 89, 
105, 340, 541 ; conflict between 
labor and, 90; functions of, 91 
ff.; and averages, 92; finds 
work, 93 ; increases product, 94, 
100; saves waste, 94; outside 
of tangible production, 97; re- 
ward of, loi; cannot afford to 
grind labor or capital, 107; 
capital and labor powerless with- 
out, 107; of handworkers, 108; 
comparative profits in different 
fields of, 109; few have great, 
no; is increasing, no; politi- 
cal, lacking in America, 146; 
essential to securing free labor, 
154; how affected by com- 
munism, 222 ff.; by socialism, 
225 ff.; forcing, to guide labor, 
227; powers of, 228; private 
property a consequence of, 
229; and desert, 240; affecting 
diffusion of wealth, 326; how 
cultivated, 347 ; should not be 
paralyzed by law, 354; move- 
ments of, influenced by taxa- 
tion, 532 

Accidents, protecting labor- 
ers against, 287; and closed 
shop, 287 



Accommodation Paper, 162 

Act of God or the public 
enemy, 166, 181, 183 

Adams, T. S., on strikes and 
lockouts, 251, 252 n., 271, 274^., 
410; on labor laws, 283; on 
public franchises, 410 n. 

Administrators, 201 

Advertisements, government 
loss in carrying, 412 

Aflarmation and oath, 164 

Agency {see also agents) by 
necessity, 192 

Agents, 190; liable for ex- 
ceeding authority, 191; cannot 
make any profit for themselves, 
192; liable with principal in 
wrong-doing, 193; superior gen- 
erally liable, 193; responsible 
for subagents, 194; classes of, 

195 

Agreement {see also con- 
tract), 152 

Aid, government, for building 
railroads, 411 

Alabama, unlawful acts in, 
279 

Alexandria, Va., electricity 
in, 441 

Alienation of estates, 204 

America, all property in, 
owned collectively by all the 
people, 236 

American Federation of Labor, 
254, 261 n., 282 

Ainerican Steel Co., 255 

633 



634 



Index. 



Amortization, 620 

Anarchism, 219; remedy for, 
proposed by Judge Ar^quist 
and the author, 220 

Anti-Boycott Association { ee 
a/5<9 boycotts), 261 

"Antient Light", 80 

Anti-Injunction Bill { ee also 
injunction), 261 n., 282 

Anti-Trust Law of 1890, 136 
if.; difficulty of getting ad- 
vantages out of such laws, 137; 
and the railroads, 138 

Apprentices, limiting number 
of, 253 

Appropriation-Tax (taking 
whole value of land), 595, 603 

Appurtenances, 80 ; party 
walls, 81; land beside roads, 
81; land by water, 81 

Arbitration, comf?ulsory, 297 
ff.; and private contract con- 
tradictory, 317, 318; step to- 
ward state socialism, 319; vol- 
untary, inefiective, 298, 323 

Arbitration Act, first compul- 
sory, and its effects, 299 ff.; 
H. D. Lloyd's conclusions, 306; 
in New South Wales, 308, 309; 
in Western Australia, 309; dam- 
ages in, 3 1 3 ; latest word on, 322 

Arbitration Courts, V. S. 
Clark on, 2 89 ff., 309 ff.; keep 
competition fluid, 296; in Aus- 
tralasia, 296 ff.; and closed 
shop, 315; and freedom of the 
press, 316; and "the obliga- 
tion of contracts", 317; and 
the right of assembly, 317; and 
trial by jury, 318 

Aristotle, 93; created value 
in material things, 103; first 
systematic writer on politics, 

523 

Arkbridge, Mayor, of Phila- 
delphia, cited, 422 

Arkwright, Sir Richard, in- 
fluence exerted by his loom, 345 

Armies produce value, 102 

Army Outfitting, etc., govern- 



ment its own customer, 228; 
private initiative essential to 
variety, 228; by government, 
494 

Arnquist, Judge, and anar- 
chism^ 220 

Assignees, 200 

Assistance of poor: see rec- 
reations AND ASSISTANCE 

Asylums, 496 

Atkinson, Edward, on taxa- 
tion, 531; on the tariff, 550 

Attainder, 35 

Australasia, laborers restrict- 
ing work in, 216; the "Para- 
dise of Labor", 263; unionists 
of, 263; state competition with 
monopolies, 291 ; fixing of mini- 
mum wage, 292 ff. ; sweating in, 
292-294; compulsory arbitra- 
tion, 296 ff.; taxation in, 457; 
government success in money- 
lending, 459; utility of govern- 
ment ownership, 460; "the 
government stroke" in, 461, 
470; old-age pensions in, 500; 
separated tax and single tax in, 
600 

Austro-Hungary, suffrage for 
city officers in, 484, 485 

Avebury, Lord, on municipal 
trading, 448, 454^^- 

Averages, and ability, 92; 
tend to rise, 327 

Backhouse, Judge, on New 
Zealand Arbitration Act, 308 

Bacon, Roger, created value 
in material things, 103 

Bad Times: see hard times 

Bailments, 181; on different 
kinds of goods, 181 ; " common 
carrier" defined, 182; limiting 
liability without contract, 182; 
bill-of -lading, 182; hiring, 183; 
limit of responsibility, 183; 
without consideration, 184; lia- 
bility of innkeepers, 1 84 ; pledge, 
185; general principle of lia- 
bility of bailees, 186 



Index. 



63: 



Baldwin, Jud£;e, on incorpo- 
rations, 121 

Ballot, Australian, 484 ; ma^ic 
in, 629 

Baltimore, revenue from 
street-railway franchises in, 
takes care of all the parks, 146, 
423,428; rebuilding of, after fire^ 
238 

Bankers, produce value, 102, 
103 ; control policies of nations, 

Banknotes, essentials of, 385 
Bankrupts, assignees of, 200; 
justice of discharging, 200 

Banks, savings, 374, 498; 
need of small, 390; effect on 
politics of branch, 390 ; taxation 

of, 390, 584 

Barbarian's idea of liberty, 33 ; 

of property rights in land, 45 

Bargain {see also contract), 
152, 167 

Bargain-Stores, 94, 130 

Barter and money, 360 

Bastiat, quoted, 326 

Baths, public, 494 

Beef Trust, government suit 
against, 137 

Belgium, labor in, 90; rate 
of taxation in, 531 

Bellamy, Edward, his scheme, 
140 

Bell Telephone Co. forced out 
of Massachusetts by taxation, 

569, 570 

Bemis, Prof., on municipal 
gas-plants, 439; on high wages 
in public works, 445 n. 

Benevolence {see also char- 
ity; wealth), of the rich, 352; 
no bar to accumulating wealth, 
352 

Berlin, regulation of adver- 
tising signs in, 445; electoral 
franchise in, 486; fire-insurance 
obligatory in, 501 

Bets, 165; President Hadley 
on, 166 

Bill-of -Lading, 182 



Bill of Rights, 35 

Birmingham, trust of bed- 
stead-makers of, 304 

Bonds {see also stocks), 76, 
122 

Books, number published in 
civilized countries, 414; killed 
by periodicals in the U. S. 
414 

Bookstores, decrease in, in 
the U. S., 414 

Boston, school-books, 256; 
municipal ferry in, 395; mu- 
nicipal ownership of street rail- 
ways in, 422 ; Public Library of, 
490; parks of, 491; housing the 
poor in, 493 ; personal-property 
tax in, 580 n. 

Boycotts, 28, 104, 247 ff.j 
410 n.; Anti-Boycott Associa- 
tion, 261; and Sherman Anti- 
Trust Act, 267 n.; damages 
in, 277; injunctions against, 
280 

Brassey, Thomas, on work 
and wages, 89 

Breach of Trust, 200 

Bribery, of legislature, 140; 
remedies, 141; of agent, 192 

Bricklayers and use of con- 
crete, 246 

Bridges, 393 

Brooklyn, personal-property 
tax in, 580 n. 

Brooklyn Bridge, toll on, 393 ; 
municipal ownership of rail- 
way, 423 

Bryan, W. J., the money 
question and followers of, 359; 
favors government operation of 
railways, 399 

Bunner, H. C, cited, 92 

Bureaucracies provided by 
universal suffrage, 456 

Burgomasters, German, 478 

Burns, John, labor logic of, 

451 

Burns, Robert, cited, 519 
Burrows, C. W., on postal 

policy, 414 n. 



636 



Index. 



California, personal-property 
tax in, 580 n.; taxation of 
mortgages in, 60 g, 611 

Canada, labor in, 89; banks 
in, 390; railroads built by 
government in, 408; Imnber 
kept out by high tariff, 532, 

548 

Capital {see also ability; 
enterpriser; wealth), enter- 
priser raises, 95; its return 
more like labor's than ability's, 
106; powerless without ability, 
107; entitled to protection 
equally with wages, 116; de- 
fined, 117; needs for associa- 
ting, 120; incorporating, 121; 
furnished America by Europe- 
ans, 123; effect of great ag- 
gregations of, on legislation, 
140; increase in wages has 
come largely from, 339; move- 
ment of, influenced by taxa- 
tion, 532, 533 

Capitalism and socialism, 239 
Capital Punishment, 172, 514, 

Capital Trusts, 138, 254, 255 
"Captains of Industry", 38, 

103 

Carelessness, a wrong, 169; 
vast American wealth and good 
nature promote, 482 

Carlyle, Thomas, on hanging, 

515 

Carnegie, Andrew, and the 

gateway of opportunity, 239; 

benefactions of, 490 

Caveat emptor, 179 

Cestui que trust, 200 

Chancery Court, 47 

Charity {see also housing the 
poor; recreations and as- 
sistance), 30, 350, 351; should 
be reserved for emergencies, 30; 
should help poor to help them- 
selves, 57; impossible under 
socialism, 226; general govern- 
ment production attacks, 229; 
effective only where wisely 



directed, 349; communistic and 
socialistic idea of, 349 ; Charity 
Organization Societies, 350, 499, 
520; present lines enough, 350; 
good only for those unable to 
work, 351; education of the 
poor, 351; province of the law, 
352; duty of the rich, 354; 
corruption of voters under 
guise of, 483; economy and 
civilization require, 495; uni- 
versal suffrage as affecting, 496 ; 
general conclusions, 501 

Charles I., principal statute of 
limitations passed during reign 
of, 74 

Charles II., principal statute 
of frauds passed during reign of, 
69 

Charters for railways, 404 

Chattel Mortgages, 150 

Checks, 362; not a legal ten- 
der, 187 

Chicago, site of, sold for a 
song, 59; strikes in, 261 n.; 
labor bureaus in, 262 w., 499; 
Typothetae case in, 270, 277; 
street-railway franchises in, 422 ; 
power to own but not operate 
street railways, 425; gas-plant 
in, 438 • 

Children's Courts, 510 

China, labor most abundant 
in, 99; primitive society in, 
153; little change from condi- 
tion of status, 156 

Christ, laws of Nature enun- 
ciated by, 23, 114; moral atmo- 
sphere created by, an essential 
of material well-being, 93; 
created value in material things, 
102; and the motive for charity, 
502 

"Christian", the label, 239 
Cincinnati, owns a railway, 
399; revenue from street-rail- 
way franchises in, 423, 428; 
personal property tax in, 
580 n. 
Citizens' Associations, 324 



Index. 



637 



Citizens' Industrial Associa- 
tions, 245, 269 

City Government {see also 
municipalization; suffrage) ^ 

17 

Civic Relations, all-important, 
I ; defined, 4 ; general conclu- 
sions regarding, 624; evolution 
of, 625 

Civics, evolution in, vii; de- 
fined, 4; distinguished from 
"political relations", 4; not as 
exact as mathematics, 10; 
questions determined by prices 
of stocks, 123 

Civilization, comes from work, 
26; affected by land-tenure, 49, 
563; proportion of private 
owners increases with, 5 1 ; would 
retrograde without inventors 
and organizers of industry, 99 ; 
of Greece and Japan, simplicity 
of, 100; what constitutes, 100; 
history of, an overcoming of 
disadvantages, 115; affected 
by contract, 152, 229; mili- 
tarism declines with advance of, 
156; rapid growth of Japan in, 
157; wealth essential to, 157; 
affected by trade, 157; by 
socialism, 158 ; the web of, 242 ; 
"rich richer and poor poorer" 
not true under, 328; consump- 
tion of food increasing faster 
than population under, 333; 
consists in things that a man 
can do without, 347 ; wise 
philanthropy necessary to, 349; 
affected by money, 359 ff.; 
by roads, 391; dangers menac- 
ing American, 473; affected by 
charity, 495, 502; government 
service outside of monopolies 
detrimental to, 528; realty-tax 
incidental to, 587; evolution of , 
625 

Civil-Service Reform a remedy 
for party control over municipal 
offices, 478 

Civil Suit illustrated, 1 5 



Clark, Victor S., on Austral- 
asian arbitration courts, 289 ff., 
309 ff.; on Australasian experi- 
ence with municipalization, 456 

Class Legislation, 316 

Cleveland, and three-cent fare, 
423 ; gas company in, 438 

Cleveland, President, stops 
the panic of '93, 374 ff . 

Closed Shop, 250; accidents 
and, 287; arbitration courts 
and, 315 

Cnut's feudal system, 47 

Coal-Mining Business, U. S. 
government in, 416; New Zea- 
land in, 459_ 

Coercion, trade-union, 243 ff.; 
false justifications for, 247; 
threefold, 247 ff.; striking, 248; 
conspiring to stop work, 249; 
other forms of, 250; no magic 
in, 262 ; law's regulation of, 263 

Coin, currency only in, inelas- 
tic and extravagant, 383 

Colbert, J. B., his theory of 
taxation, 534, 559 

Collective Bargaining, 254, 255 

Collectivism and individu- 
alism, 523 

Collectors of the General Capi- 
tal, 104 

Colorado, eight-hour law in, 
284 

Combinations, 134 

Commercial Paper, 150 

Commercial Travelers, 128; 
improvements effected by, 128; 
vast number thrown out of 
work by trusts, 133 

Commissions, desirability of, 
467 

Common Carriers, 182 

Communal Land, 45 ; deaden- 
ing influence of, in India, 45 ; in 
Russia, 45, 62 

Communism, in land, 45; 
contract under, 155; defined, 
219 ff.; $1,200 apiece, 221; 
necessarily ephemeral, 222; in- 



638 



Index. 



volves robbery, 222; wealth 
often destroyed when divided, 
225; against Nature, 223 ; char- 
ity under, 349 

Companies {see also corpora- 
tions), 125 

Competency, laborers retiring 
with a, 327 

Competition, 39, 127; hated 
by the lazy and stupid, 127; in 
domestic convenience, 127; 
benefits illustrated, 127 ff. ; 
in locomotion, 128; in com- 
mercial traveling, 128; effects 
industrial revolution, 128; ef- 
fects steadiness of business, 
129; the "life of trade", 129; 
evils, 130 ff.; cooperation and, 
131; sometimes wasteful, 131, 
132, 142, 549; public seldom 
gainer by wasteful, 131; trusts 
a remedy for wasteful, 132; 
consists in lowering prices, 132 ; 
Professor Cooley on, 141 ; 
Charles Scribner cited, 142 ; 
socialism against, 234; equaliz- 
ing, 311; stifled by ''protec- 
tion", 377; effect of govern- 
ment ownership of railroads on, 
402; effective industry requires, 
526; taxation and, 537 

Concord, Mass., boulevard op- 
posed in, 393 

Conditional Sale, 178 

Conduct, good, inspirers of, 
create value in material things, 
102 

Conduits for water, gas and 
electricity, 443 

Confiscation, 251 

Confucius, created value in 
material things, 102 

Confusion, 170 

Connecticut, increase of wages 
in, 330; personal-property tax 
in, 579 n. 

Consideration {see also con- 
tract), under statute of frauds, 
70; defined, 159 ff.; in bail- 
ments, 184 



Conspiracy, to stop vv^ork, 249 ; 
labor, 265 ff.; law of, 267 ff.; 
Judge Harlan on, 267; Judge 
Knowlton on, 268, 273; U. S. 
Supreme Court on, 268 ; Daven- 
port on, 269; district attorneys' 
duty, 273 ; Prof. Seager on, 274, 

275 

Constitution, U. S., not the 

final word of human wisdom, 
viii; Bill of Rights in the, 35; 
amending, 478 ; obstacle to bet- 
ter system of taxation in, 623 
Constitutional Law: see law 
Contract {see also contracts 
FOR personal relations; con- 
tracts concerning personal 
property; quasi-contractual 
relations; sale), rights, 40; 
value of established forms, 72; 
personal property the great 
field of, 151; rights of, dis- 
tinguished from property rights, 
152; as an element in civiliza- 
tion, 152 ff.; definition, 152; 
possible only to the free, 153; 
an education in freedom, 153; 
only able employers can secure 
labor under, 154; status versus 
contract, 154, 158, 317; freedom 
and private property evolve 
with, 155; Morrisey on contract- 
breakers, 158; law of rights 
under, 1 59 ff . ; essentials of, 159 ; 
illustrations, 160; natural love 
and affection, 160 ; promises and 
contracts, 161; fictional, 163; 
mutuality, 163; three points 
necessary to, 163-165; law and 
religion, 164; justice and honor, 
165; what contracts not en- 
forceable, 165 ff.; law imposes 
self-preservation, 166; con- 
tracts which the law assumes, 
167; estoppel, 168; carelessness 
and fraud, 169; statutes of 
limitations, 169; force vitiates, 
170; waste through dishonesty, 
170; when parties do not meet, 
171; law does not require im- 



I;:dex. 



639 



possibilities, 183; remediec for 
broken, 198; principal kinds of, 
198; general government pro- 
duction attacks, 229; obliga- 
tion of, 317 ; Australasian arbi- 
tration attacks, 317; may some- 
times work injustice, 319 

Contract Labor, 2 84 

Contracts concerning Personal 
Property, law of, 173 f£.; sale 
and delivery, 173; possession 
and ownership, 175; no one 
can sell more title than he has, 
175; owner must not secure 
possession by force, 176; de- 
livery and acceptance com- 
plete ownership, 177; condi- 
tional sale, 178; option, 178; 
when defects must be disclosed, 
179; warranty, 179; surety- 
ship, 180; insurance, 180; bail- 
ments, 181; tender, 186; con- 
tractual disabilities, 187; some 
limits of quantum vakhat, 188; 
the law protects the weak, 189; 
verbal, in Wall Street, 342 

Contracts for Personal Rela- 
tions, law of, 190 ff.; agency, 
190; partnership, 195; service, 
196; remedies for broken, 198 

Convenience, promotion of, a 
function of government, 6, 

357 ^• 

Cooley, Prof., on competition, 

141 

Cooper, Peter, his fortune in 
accord with Nature's laws, 114; 
his rise, 155, 158 

Cooperation and competition. 

Cooperative Enterprises, 107, 

113 

Corporations, 121; rapid new 
development of, in the U. S., 
50; liability, 121; perpetuity, 
122; stocks and bonds, 122; 
cheapen product, 124; not all 
owned by the rich, 124; irre- 
sponsibility, 125; small ones 
undesirable, 125; great indus- 



tries mostly controlled by, 126; 
hated by labor, 126; overtaxed, 
126; danger of monopoly, 126; 
state control, 136; made by 
the state, 138 ; corruption funds 
of, 140; effect of personal- 
property tax on, 583 ; cause of 
prejudice, 584 ; taxation of fran- 
chise and non-franchise, 584 

Corruption funds {see also 
monopolies; municipal dif- 
ficulties; protection; pub- 
lic works; pull; taxation; 
trusts), 140 ff. 

Cotton-Gin, industrial change 
effected by, 345 

Cotton-Spinners, increased 
wages of, 330 

County Government, 10, 16 

Courtesy and Dower, 72, 201 
ff. 

Courts under local, state and 
national governments, 15 if.: 
needed against ignorance as 
well as against fraud, 170; 
probate, 206; supervising trus- 
tees, 207; children's, 510 

Cox, Horace, on eight-hour 
day, 338 

Creosote and Scotch whiskey, 

539 

Crime and pauperism among 

children of divorced parents, 2 

Criminals {see also defec- 
tives), generally poor, 342, 
509; generally defective, 509; 
one wrong step does not dems- 
onstrate a criminal, 510; the 
indeterminate sentence, 510, 
511; most criminals insane, 511; 
cheaper to keep rounders per- 
manently, 511; habitual, 512; 
prison labor, 512; capital pun- 
ishment, 514; life-term pris- 
oners, 515; taxation for main- 
tenance of idle prisoners, 536 
Criminal Suit illustrated, 16 
Currency: see money; paper 
money 

Customs: see tariff duties 



640 



Index. 



Cutler, Mayor, of Rochester, 
on need of government inspec- 
tion of street railways, 422 



Dalrymple, 



of Glasc;ow. 



on municipal operation in 
America, 424 

Damages, for trespass, 68; 
for broken contracts, 198; in 
strikes and boycotts, 277, 278, 
301; in arbitration law, 313 

Daniels, Prof., on railroads, 
396 ff.; on municipalization, 

445, 447, 464 

Darwin, Major Leonard, on 
municipal trading, 442, 447, 448 

Davenport, Daniel, on con- 
spiracy, 269 

Death-Penalty: see capital 

PUNISHMENT 

Debs, E. v., cited, 297 
Debts, city, Lecky on, 469 
Deeds, 70; seal on, 71; es- 
sentials of, 7 1 ; value of es- 
tablished forms of, 7 2 ; delivery 
of, 76; fraud in, 78 

Defectives {see also crimi- 
nals), 349, 507 ff.; trustees for, 
207 ; the persistently poor, 507 ; 
the insane, 508; the criminal, 
509; euthanasia, 513; educa- 
tion the only remedy, 514; capi- 
tal punishment, 514; the young, 

517 ff- 
Delivery and Acceptance, 177 

Demand and Supply, 129; in 
Aabor, 244 

Democracy, on trial in muni- 
cipal operation, 465; para- 
doxes of, 478; relations of, and 
laissez-faire, 489 

Denmark, old-age pensions in, 

501 
Depression, business, of 1903- 

4, 134 

Derby, Earl, on indirect taxes, 
558 n. 

Derrick, Mrs., "Crime" of, 
210 n. 

Detroit, municipal ownership 



of street railways in, 423; elec- 
tricity in, 440 

Dewey, Admiral, as an enter- 
priser, 96 

Dingley, N., and the Spanish- 
war tax, 554 n. 

Dingley Act and Europe, 543 

Direct Taxes {see also income- 
tax; inheritance-taxes; per- 
sonal-property tax; realty- 
taxes; taxation), 534, 562 ff.; 
inquisitorial, 562 ff., 573 ff.; 
income-tax, 563 ff. ; inheritance- 
taxes, 571; personal-property 
taxes, 573 ff.; obvious, 586 ff.; 
realty-taxes, 586 ff. 

Disease, good resulting from, 
115; statutes protecting com- 
munity from, 288 

Dishonesty responsible for bad 
government, 7 

Disraeli, on income-tax, 571 

Distribution, paradoxes of, 
103 

Dividends, cumulative, 122; 
limiting, 139 

Divorce, its effect on children, 
2 

Docks, 396 

Domesday Book, 48, 73 

Donald, Robert, on municipal 
trading, 454 n. 

Donnelly Act, 138 

Double Taxation {see also 
mortgages), 565, 608 ff.; of 
mortgages, 608; tax liens and 
deduct from valuation, 613 ; re- 
sult of excises, 613 

Dower and Courtesy, 72, 201 
ff. 

Drummers: see commercial 
travelers 

Duluth, water and gas in, 
440 

Dunne, Mayor, and Chicago 
street railways, 424 

Duties: see rights; tariff 
duties 

Dwellings for the poor {see also 
housing the poor), 491 



Index. 



64.1 



Easton, Pa., electricity in, 440 ; 
Mayor March on, 440; D. W. 

Nevin on, 441 

Economics, bad^ destruction 
in, 102 

Edinburgh, hospitals in, 497 

Edison, Thomas A., cited, 93 

Education {see also recrea- 
tions AND assistance), the 
poor helped by, 350; leisure 
classes should promote, 355; 
local versus state control, 480 ; 
state and private, 517 ff.; 
illiterate voters, 518; in Ger- 
many, 518; usable and un- 
usable, 518; what is needed, 
518: policy of European cities, 
519; practical, not foe to 
poetry, 519; pauperization 
through, 519; " school-treasu- 
ries" in France, 520; state's 
responsibility, 520; parents' 
duty, 520;, elementary, in Eng- 
land, 521; in Holland, 521; the 
higher, 521; political pulls in, 
522; state universities versus 
private, 522 ; the great hope for 
the future, 623 

Eight-hour Day (5^^ also work- 
day, shorter), 336 ff.; in Utah 
and Colorado, 284; Supreme 
Court and, 284; John Rae on, 
337; Horace Cox and Sidney 
Webb on, 338; effect on cigar- 
makers, 339 

Ejectment, 68 

Electoral Franchise : see suf- 
frage; UNIVERSAL suffrage; 

voters 

Electricity, municipalization 
of, 440; versus gas, 442 ; plants 
in England, Germany and the 

U. S, 453 

Emerson, R. W., on the dis- 
tribution of wealth, 356 

Eminent Domain, 64; in 
monopoly abuses, 139; at Ni- 
agara Falls, 139; under com- 
munism, 222; under socialism, 
230; clearing slums under, 492 



Employees {see also labor; 
railroads; service), rights and 
duties of, 28, 196 ff.; accident 
insurance of German, 30, 500; 
power to contract, 154; in- 
crease in, 339 

Employers, rights and duties 
of, 28, 196 ff.; often pay too 
high wages, 100; competition 
among, r54; coercing of , 248 ff.; 
associations of, 260 ff. 

Endorsement, 14S ff., 161 

England, Poor Law in, 29, 
230, 231; laborers in, 89, no; 
churls and villeins of, 154; 
wages in, 221, 332; increase of 
estates in, subject to succession 
tax, 331; improved condition 
of working classes in, 331 n.\ 
paupers in (London), 332; pos- 
tal savings-banks, 332 tz-., 498; 
roads in, 392 ; government ferry 
at Woolwich, 395; railroads in, 
397, 401; municipal gas-plants 
in, 435; opposition to municipal 
trading in, 469 ff.; suffrage for 
city officers in, 484, 485; labor 
bureaus in, 499 ; rate of taxation 
in, 53 1 ; free trade in, 549 ; waste- 
fulness of taxation in, 558 n.; 
division of incomes in, 567; 
income-tax in, 571; multiple 
voting in, 595; rental- value tax 
in, 606; taxes luxuries mainly, 

615 

"Enrichment", 188 

Ensley, Enoch, (quoted by 
Wells,) on taxation of movable 
property, 577 

Enterpriser {see also ability; 
capital; wealth), and wage- 
earners, 92, 103; defined, 94; 
prophesies wants, 95; raises 
capital, 95; at the works, 95; 
outside the works, 9 5 ; popular 
view of the, 95 ; effects division 
of labor, 96; often fails, 97; 
J. H. Walker quoted, 97 n.; 
his income not at expense of 
labor, 98 ; must pay good 



642 



Index. 



wages, loo-i; fallacy that he 
produces nothing, 10 1 ; rates of 
division of product, 107; gen- 
erally gets less than nothing, 
108; Mayo-Smith quoted, 340 

Entrepreneur : see enter- 
priser 

Equilibration, law of, 327 
Equity of Redemption, 76, 
611, 612 

Erie Canal, wages of laborers 
on, 330 

Escrow, 75 

Estate {see also real prop- 
erty), life, 72, 80; technical 
raeaning of, in land, 78; restric- 
tions, 83 ; in personal property, 
150 

Estates at Will, 80 
Estates for Years, 78, 79; re- 
pairs, 79; subletting, 80; ter- 
minability, 80; notice, 80 
Estoppel, 168 
Euclid, 93 
Euthanasia, 513 
Evils have their uses, 114 
Evolution, in civics, vii ff . ; 
of property rights, 42; of 
hereditary feudal relations, 47 ; 
of private ownership, 48; of 
rights in personal property, 
87 ff.; invention and, 98; a 
question of, no; simultaneous 
in freedom, private property 
and contract, 155; the law is 
an, 171; of road-making, 392; 
single tax an, 600; of taxation, 
617 ff.; of civilization, 625; of 
government, 628; not all nega- 
tive, 629 

Exchange, right of, adds to 
value, 40 

Excise, 539; secret stills, 539; 
objections, 540; may limit 
dangerous pursuits, 540; more 
than twice as good a tax as 
the tariff, 556; multiplies tax- 
ation, 613 
Executive, 13 
Executors, 202 



Experts, ideal government will 
consist of bodies of, 624 
Ex post facto Laws, 35 
Express Service, 412; by 
European post-of&ces, 415 

Failures, J. H. Walker on, 97 n. 

Fares, low. Mayor Johnson 
and, 424; how to secure, 429; 
in Columbus, Rockford and 
Cleveland, 429; in Germany, 
528; zone, in Glasgow, 429 

Farm Colonies, 53 

Farming, dearth of laborers, 
54; needs ability, 55; machin- 
ery in, 344 

Farms, abandoned, 54 

Federal Salt Co., government 
suit against, 137 

Fee Simple, 78, 587, 611 

Ferries, 395 

Feudal System, 46, 153; ad- 
vance on communism, 46; in 
the Saxon kingdoms, 46 ; under 
Cnut, 46; guardianship, 47; 
disposal in marriage, 47 ; under 
William the Conqueror, 47 ; 
Domesday Book, 48; evolu- 
tion of private ownership under, 
48 ff.; scutage, 48; leases for 
labor, 48; money commuta- 
tion of labor leases, 48; con- 
tract under, 155 ff. 

Fiat Money, 364 

Fiction in Law, 163 

Fiduciary defined, 199 

Finance, incorrect principles 
of, destroy value, 102 

Folk, Governor, quoted, 399 

Food, increase in price of, 335 

Forgiveness a law of Nature, 

23 

Fortune {see also wealth), ex- 
amples of change of, 97 tz-., 
209 7'J., 348 w.; inequality of, 
113; right use of, 113; excessive 
fortunes, 204 n. 

France, public workshops of, 
29, 30, 500; land laws in, 51; 
labor in, 90; increase in wages 



Index. 



643 



in, 333; roads in, 393; rail- 
roads in, 397; suffrage in, 4S6; 
theatre in, 490; housing the 
poor in, 493; "school-treasu- 
ries" in, 520; rate of taxation 
in, 531; levies retaliatory duty 
on Italian silk and cottonseed- 
oil and bacon, 542, 543; pro- 
tectionism in, 549; wasteful- 
ness of taxation in, 558 n. 

Franchise, Electoral, {see also 
suffrage; universal suf- 
frage; VOTERS,) 473 ff. 

Franchises, 145; seized by 
politicians, 145; should not be 
sold outright, 146; value of, 
in Baltimore, 146; operation, 
ownership, regulation, 394; in- 
crement in, 394, 428; of ferries, 
395; taxation of, 404, 584; 
government control of private 
operation of, 409; Prof. Adams 
on, 410 n.\ in Chicago, 422 ; too 
short, 452 

Franchise-Tax {see also real- 
ty-taxes), 606 ff. 

Frauds, statute of, 69; in 
land transfer, 78, 84; in con- 
tracts, 169; never defined, 169; 
in consideration, 173, 174 

Free assembly, etc.: see lib- 
erty 

Freedom {see also liberty), 
contract and private property 
evolve together with, 155; so- 
cialism would destroy, 231 

Freedom of the Press {see also 
liberty) curtailed by arbitra- 
tion courts, 316 

Free-Food Depots, 31 

Galton and the law of aver- 
ages, 92, 93, 327 

Garfield, J. A., rise of, 155 
Gas, 43 5 ; craves municipali- 
zation less than water, 435; 
cheapened by it in some places, 

436 

Gautama, moral atmosphere 
created by, an essential of mate- 



rial well-being, 93 ; created 
value in material things, 102 

Genghis Khan and the com- 
munal system, 154, 155 

George, Henry, theories of fol- 
lowers of, 58, 563; advocates 
single tax, 595, 621 

Georgia, personal-property 
tax in, 580 n. 

Germany, employees' acci- 
dent insurance in, 30, 500; 
labor in, 90 ; income-tax statis- 
tics of, 333; new money sys- 
tem in, 368; government fer- 
ries in, 395; railroads in, 397 
municipal gas-plants in, 435 
extension of street lighting in 
435; burgomasters in, 478 
suffrage for city officers in, 484 
485; vote of taxpayers in, 486 
runs theatres well, 490; hous- 
ing the poor in, 493 ; labor 
bureaus in, 499; old-age pen- 
sions in, 500; unusable educa- 
tion in, 518; protectionism in, 
549; income-tax in, 571 

Giffen, Sir Robert, on wages, 

331 

Gladstone on income-tax, 571 

Glasgow, failure of Bank, 
122; municipal ferries in, 395; 
docks in, 396; report of tram- 
ways, 425 ; municipal gas-plants 
in, 436; extension of street 
lighting in, 436; railway facili- 
ties and fares in, 449; objec- 
tion to municipal trading in, 
454 w.; housing the poor in, 
493 ; public wash-houses in, 
495 ; lodging-houses in, 497, 498 

Glass-Blowers, making work 
for, 217 

Gluts (in manufactures), 546, 

55° 

Godkin, E. L., as a citizen, 
355; on division of English 
incomes, 567; favored aboli- 
tion of legislatures, 625 

Golden Rule a law of Nature, 

23 



644 



Index. 



Gompers, Samuel, anti-in- 
junction bill advocated by, 
282; his "fight", 297, 324 

Goodnow, Prof., on reform in 
municipal politics, 478; on 
separation of state and local 
functions, 479 

"Goods" not all material 
things, 108 

Government {see also mu- 
nicipal difficulties; munici- 
palization), general functions 
of, 5 if., 8; illustrated, 5; 
classified, 5; results of bad, 6; 
responsibility for bad, 7; good, 
requires effort, 7; geographical 
divisions, 9 ff.; departments, 
13 ff.; sources, 14; protects 
workingmen, 28; landowners 
best guardians of, 52; produces 
value, 102; control of trusts 
and monopolies, 136; danger of 
tyranny, 139; production by, 
attacks variety, 228; and pri- 
vate property and contract and 
charity, 229; by injunction, 
281; honesty of, affects prices, 
343; aid to deserving poor, 351 ; 
in manufacturing and banking 
business, 375, 385; notes, objec- 
tions to, 382; may pass law 
impairing obligation of con- 
tracts, 403 ; railroads managed 
by, 406 ff.; railroad vote in, 
408; municipalization, 451, 524 
ff . ; production by, attacks initi- 
ative, 451, 470; state functions 
and city functions, 479; army 
outfitting, etc., by, 494; admin- 
isters charities poorly, 495; and 
the death-penalty, 513, 514; in 
education, 520; proper sphere 
of, 523 ff.; individualism and 
collectivism, 523; cost of, in 
different countries, 531; sta- 
bility influenced by methods of 
taxation, 532; indirect taxes 
prevent criticism of, 558; cost 
of, per person in U. S., 558; 
affects real-estate values, 591; 



ideal, 624; vices in evolution 
of, -628 

' ' Government Stroke ' ' in Aus- 
tralasia, 461, 470 

Graft, and socialism, 238; cor- 
poration and political, 405, 492 ; 
in London, 421 

Great Britain, gas consumed 
in, 439; street railways, electric 
lights, and telephones in, as 
compared with the U. S., 449; 
municipal gas-plants in, 452 

' ' Greatest Happiness ' ' Prin- 
ciple, 22, 27, 63, 64, 113, 204, 
247, 270 

"Great Industry": see in- 
dustry 

Greece, simplicity of civiliza- 
tion of, 100 ; busy with her past, 
518 

Greed and socialism, 238 

Greenback Currency of Civil 
War destroyed values, 102, 366, 
378; versus gold, 365 

Gresham's Law, 386 

Grosvenor,W . M . , on prices ,329 

Guardianship, feudal, 47 ; at 
present, 206 

Habeas Corpus, 37 

Habitation Tax {see also ren- 
tal-value tax), 619 

,Hadley, President, on betting, 
166; on improvements in rail- 
roads and telegraphs, 470 

Hahnemann and the home- 
op athists, 232 

Hamburg, docks in, 396 ; gas- 
plants in, 435 

Hamilton, Alexander, revenue 
tariff of, 544 

Hamilton, O., lighting plants 
in, 438 

Handworkers, claims for, 90, 
95, 108^ 

Happiness {see also pursuit 
OF happiness), principle of 
greatest 22,27; state's relation 
to, 41 ; not dependent on wealth, 
348; causes of, 628 



Index. 



645 



Hard Times, forehandedness 
against, 346; effect of, on 
prices, 346 

Harlan, Justice, on con- 
spiracy, 267 

Head, Mayor, of Nashville, 
and street-railway companies, 
427; experience with, gas and 
electricity, 441 

Hearst, W. R., and municipal 
ownership, 395 

Help: see charity; housing 
THE poor; recreations and 

ASSISTANCE 

Helpless: see defectives 
Henry, Patrick, cited, 519 
Henry H., scutage imposed 

by, 48, 587 

Henry VHI., regard for hu- 
man life in time of, 172 

High Prices and palliatives, 

314 

Hildebrand and the feudal 
system, 155 

Hill, John A., and printing 
strike, 88 

Hiring, 183 

Holland, suffrage for city 
officers in, 484 

Home, importance of the, 2 ; 
right to a, 53 

Honesty, raises wages and 
credit, 341; lowers prices, 342; 
of government affects prices, 343 

Honor and justice, 161, 165 

Hospitals, 496 

Hotels improved by com- 
mercial travelers, 129 

Hours of Labor {see also 
work-day), 329 

House-Building, 493, 494 

Housing the Poor, 491 ff, ; 
community should regulate it in 
self-defence, 494 ; but not neces- 
sarily undertake it, 494 

Idiots vote in New York, 
486 n. 

Idleness, insurance against, 
500 



Ignorance responsible for bad 

government, 7 

Illinois, labor bureaus in, 500; 
personal-property tax in, 581 n. 

"Imperialism" and politics, 
476 

Improvements, land occupi- 
er's rights in, 60; should be 
voted on by taxpayers only 
484 ff . 

Incapables {see also defec- 
tives), 349 

Incomes, statistics of British, 
331 n. 

Income-Tax, impossibilities 
not required by law, 183 ; Prus- 
sian statistics of, 333; de- 
clared unconstitutional by Su- 
preme Court, 553, 570; defined, 
563; falls only on successes and 
active property, 563; propor- 
tioned to ability, 563; pre- 
mium on lying, 564; violates 
rights of privacy, 565; gener- 
ally doubles taxation, 565; as 
illustrating progressive taxa- 
tion, 565; discrimination of 
sources, 566; as equalizing for- 
tunes, 566; progressive, 566; 
as offsetting injustice in other 
taxes, 567; out of proportion 
to state's services, 567; taxa- 
tion versus benevolence, 568; 
taxing away business and benev- 
olence, 569; characteristic of 
militarism, 570; heaviest on 
those least able to bear it, 
570; and social war, 570; ap- 
proved only as a necessity, 571 ; 
Gladstone and Disraeli on, 571 

Increment: see unearned 
increment 

Independence, civilized man 
loses the savage's, 91 

India, communal land in, 45; 
labor in, 89, 99; primitive 
society in, 153; little change 
from condition of status in, 156 

Indirect Taxes {see also tariff 
duties; excise; stamp-taxes; 



646 



Index. 



taxation), 534, 539 ^-j 55^ ff-; 
excise, 539; duties, 541; stamp- 
taxes, 553; general conclusions 
on, 556 f£.; wasteful, 556; hard 
on the poor, 556; corrupt legis- 
lation, 557; prevent criticism 
of government, 558; why popu- 
lar, 559; summary for and 
against, 561; poor substitutes 
for, 616; how England uses 
them, 616. 

Individual, society's control 
of the, I ff.; liberty of the, 288 

Individualism, all the progress 
of mankind made under, 232, 
235; socialism and, 232; uni- 
versal suffrage implies, 488 ; and 
collectivism, 523 

Industrial Associations, 324 

Industrial Regulation pro- 
motes centralization of indus- 
try, 312 

Industries, politicians run- 
ning, 140; government control 
of, 416 ff. 

Industry, the Great, cheapens 
product, 98; early days of, 
106; essentials of, 117; de- 
veloped by corporations, 123; 
economies of, 133-135; venal 
legislation and, 140; intro- 
duced by steam, 345; effect on 
labor, 345; on economic doc- 
trine, 345 ; requires competition, 
526; as affected by taxation, 

532 

Inheritance-Taxes, 571; col- 
lateral, 572; Evening Post 
quoted, 572 

Initiative, private, essential 
to variety, 228 

Injunction, Anti-Injunction 
Bill, 261 n.; against boycotts, 
280; judge's power to punish 
under, 280; government by, 
281 

Injuries {see also accidents) , 
protecting laborers against, 287 

Injustice, citizen's duty to 
fight, 196 



Innkeepers as bailees, 185 

Inquisitorial Taxes {see also 
DIRECT taxes), 562 ff . ; in- 
tolerable, 616 

Insane, care of, 508 ; criminals, 
509 ff. 

Insurance of employees 
against loss of work and acci- 
dent, 30, 500; in general, 180; 
against idleness of old age, 500 

Insurance Companies, ofticers 
of, 103; and San Francisco 
earthquake, 236, 339 

Intelligence, growth of, 115 

Interest {see also usury), 
defined, 118; legal rate of, 118; 
law in New York regarding, 119; 
reduction of, 339 

Interstate Commerce Act, 
Prof. Seager's summary of, 405 

Intestates, devolution of es- 
tates of, 201 ; rights of relatives 
of, 201 

Invention and evolution, 98 

Inventor reaps only small 
proportion of his production, 88 ; 
defined, 98 

Investment, unwise, 121 

Ireland, labor in, 59; secret 
stills in, 539 

Italy, beggars in, 349; rail- 
roads in, 397, 407; suffrage for 
city officers in, 484, 485; old- 
age pensions in, 501; rate of 
taxation in, 531; levies high 
duty on French wines, 542 ; 
protectionism in, 549 ; income- 
tax in, 570 

Jacksonville, Fla., electricity 
in, 440; and the Australian 
ballot, 484 

James II., regard for human 
life in time of, 172 

Japan, simplicity of civiliza- 
tion of, 100; militarism in, 
157 ■> great advancement of, 

157 

Jersey City, personal-property 

tax in, 580 n. 



Index. 



647 



Jevons, W. S., on shorter 
work-day, 338 

Johnson, Mayor Tom, and 
three-cent fare, 424 

Joint Traffic Association, 137 

Judgments, 74 

Judiciary {see also courts), 
13 ff. 

Jury, trial by, Australasian 
arbitration attacks, 31S; pos- 
sibly now outgrown, 319 

Kansas tries a new way of 
"bleeding", 374 

Kansas City, conduits for 
wires in, 444 

Keane, Archbishop, on slight- 
ing of work, 216 

Kipling, Rudyard, cited, 519 

Kitchens, public, 30 

Knowlton, Judge, on conspir- 
acy, 268, 273 

Label, union, 255; and Bos- 
ton school-books, 256 

Labor {see also ability; capi- 
tal; enterpriser; labor- 
saving machinery; labor 
trusts; scamping work; trade- 
unions; wages; work), in 
production, 42, 87, 89; Brassey 
on, 89; in various countries 
compared, 89; Italian versus 
negro, in the U. S., 89; con- 
flict ' between ability and, 90 ; 
enterpriser regulates division 
of, 96; enterpriser's income 
not at expense of, 98; abounds 
in poorest countries, 99; re- 
turns of, nearly fixed, 104; 
powerless without ability, 107; 
rates of division of product, 
107; 'hates corporations, 126; 
evil effects of scamping, 209 ff.; 
piecework, 213; pretending and 
forbidding, 214; Thornton cited, 
214; in Australasia, 216; de- 
struction as an aid to produc- 
tion, 217; as affected by com- 
munism, 220 ff.; by socialism, 



230; a corner of supply of, 243, 
269; demand and supply in, 
244; coercing the laborer, 253 
ff.; and the law, 265 ff.; Par- 
liament and, 270, 277; Prof. 
Adams and Prof. Seager on 
Labor laws, 283; protecting 
laborer against himself, 284; 
against accidents, 287; laborers 
retiring with a competency, 
327; hours of, 329; rise in 
wages, decrease in hours, 335; 
increasing ability of, 340; effect 
of machinery on, 344; under 
government ownership of rail- 
roads, 408 ; labor logic of John 
Burns, 451; in English mu- 
nicipalities, 454; municipal, 
470; prison, 512; aggressions, 
627 

Labor Bureaus, 261 w., 350 
499 

Labor-Contract, violation of 
278 

Laborers: see employees; 
labor 

Labor Question {see also la- 
bor), the leading question of 
the time, iv ; a real struggle ,627 

Labor-Saving Machinery, 
strikes against, 270; increases 
production, 336; creates and 
supplies new wants, 343 ff. ; 
effect on economic doctrine, 
345; attitude of workmen to- 
ward, 346 ; as many producers 
needed with as without, 346; 
product cheapened by, 346 

Labor Trusts {see also tradf- 
UNioNs), 138, 254 ff., 2S3, 551 
626 

" Labor Vote ", the, 407, 454 

Laissez-faire, democracy and 
488, 489 

Land {see also communal 
land; farm colonies; farms; 

FEUDAL system; LANDOWNERS; 

land-tenure; private prop- 
erty; REAL property; UN- 
EARNED increment), source 



648 



Index. 



of raw material, 44; evolution 
of private ownership, 48; wide 
dissemination of private own- 
ership in America and France, 
51 n., 52 ; advantages of private 
ownership exaggerated, 52 ff.; 
people who clamor for every- 
body having it will not go to 
it, 53, 54; many of the rich 
have little or none, 54, 57; 
valuable only to able men, 55; 
proposed reversion to govern- 
ment ownership, 55 ; government 
taking, by robbery, 56; "un- 
earned increment", 57 ff.; du- 
ties of ownership breed rights, 
59; increases in value with 
growth of population, 60; rent, 
60, 118; importance of private 
property in, 62; rights in, 
limited, 63; the source of all 
other property, 68; as capital, 
117; not a monopoly, 144; 
agricultural, at a disadvantage 
under single tax, 597; sepa- 
rated tax on, exclusive of im- 
provements, 601; buildings dif- 
fuse taxes more readily than, 
602 

Landowners, number of, in- 
creases with civilization^ 5 1 ; 
best guardians of government, 
52; most thrifty citizens, 52; 
pay most of the taxes, 56; 
robbery of present, advocated; 
56; taxes no hardship to, 620 

Land-Tax, mark of liberty and 
progress, 587 ; the ideal system, 
617 ff. 

Land-Tenure {see also evo- 
lution; FEUDAL system; LAND; 

REAL property), sourcc m 
America, 48; similar among 
peoples of same grade, 49 

Lassalle, F., and labor-saving 
machinery, 345 

Laughlin, Prof., on high 
wages, 245 

Law {see also agents; as- 
signees; administrators; ap- 



purtenances; bailments; 

bankrupts; bets; contract), 
common, statute, administra- 
tive, 22, 65 ff.; defined, 65; 
four principal sources from 
which evolved, 65 ff.; constitu- 
tional, 65 ff.; protects owner- 
ship, 68; affecting transfers, 69; 
of England prevails in U. S. 
where not in conflict with 
statutes, 70; maxims of, 77, 
163, 165, 169, 179, 188, 192, 193, 
394, 405; against usury, 118; 
against trusts, 136; promises 
not as binding as contracts in, 
161, 164; and religion, 165; 
contracts that will not be en- 
forced by, 165; imposes self- 
preservation, 166; but cannot 
provide wisdom, 167; con- 
tracts which are assumed by 
the, 167; an evolution, 171; 
possession nine points of the, 
175; does not require impos- 
sibilities, 183; protects the 
weak, 189; abhors litigation, 
193; judges people by their 
records, 197; badness of pres- 
ent, does not prove goodness 
of proposed changes, 220; no 
magic inlaws, 237; natural and 
civic, 265 ff.; of conspiracy, 
267 ff.; industrial, 289; protect- 
ing the weak and foolish even 
against themselves, 351; a lux- 
ury of the rich, 352; cannot 
discriminate between people, 
352; cannot use wealth wisely, 
354; does not bother with 
trifles, 394 

Laziness responsible for bad 
government, 7 
Leases, 77 

Lecky, on city debts, 469 
Legal Aid Societies, 352 
Legislation, effects of corpo- 
rations and trusts on, 140; 
class, 316 

Legislatures, 13; in local 
government, 16; corrupted by 



Index. 



649 



trusts, 140; Nattife and human 
nature before, 598; abolition 
of, favored by Godkin, 625 

Lessee, 78 ff. 

Liberty, "eternal vigilance", 
7, 35; Anglo-Saxon principles 
of. II, 35; rights to, 32 ff.; 
limits, 32; barbarian and civ- 
ilized, 33; curtailed by others' 
rights, 33; duties balancing 
rights to, 34; state's right to 
restrain, 34; in the U. S. Con- 
stitution, 35; free press, free 
assembly, 36; the man with a 
"puU", 37, 142, 407, 408, 522; 
freedom of opinion, 38; laws 
threatening, 38; and pater- 
nalism, 286; of individual, 288 

Libraries, 490, 504 

Liens defined,<i 7 5 ; taxing, 613 

Life, right to, 25 ff.; the 
state's claims, 25, 136; hu- 
manity's claims, 25; profes- 
.sional claims, 25; duty to risk, 
2 5 ; regard for, in time 01 
Henry VIII. and James II., 
172; at present, 172; influ- 
enced by taxation, 532 

Life Estate, 72, So 

Life-insurance m Australasia, 
460, 501 

Lighting, 435 ff. 

Limitations, statutes of, 74, 
169 

Lincoln, Abraham, rise of, 

155, 158 

Liquor Traffic, limitation of, 
by taxation, 540 

Literature, damage to, in the 
U.S., 414 

Liverpool, docks in, 396; 
wastefulness of water-supply in, 

434 

Livery of Seisin, 69 

Living, right to a, 54; cost of, 

335, 336 

Living Wage, 231, 286, 306, 
314; and state socialism, 295 

Lloyd, H. D., on compulsory 
arbitration, 300, 304 ff. 



Loan Society, Provident, 498 

Local Governments, overlap- 
pings of, 9; functions, 10, 
17; municipalization, 451, 525; 
national parties and, 475-478; 
strong, the basis of Anglo-Saxon 
liberty, 480; best in Great Brit- 
ain and Germany, 525; worst in 
America, 525 

Local Option in taxation, 598 

Locke, John, single-tax the- 
ory of, 596 

Lockouts, 249, 410 n. 

Locomotive, industrial change 
effected by, 345 

Lodging-Houses, 498 

Logansport, ind., electricity 
in, 440 

London, municipal operation 
of trams in, 421; graft in, 
421; pipes in railway tunnels, 
443; housing the poor in, 493 

London, Jack, and socialism, 
239 ff. 

Loom, influence of, upon 
"the great industry", 345 

Los Angeles, removal of elec- 
tive municipal officers in, 488 

Lower depends on higher, 93 

Luck, as a way to wealth, 209 

Lunatics: see insane 

Luxuries, prices of, first to 
fall in hard times, 346; Eng- 
land taxes mainly, 615 

Machinery, Labor-Saving : see 

LABOR-SAVING MACHINERY 

McKinley Tariff Bill, 546 
McPherson, Judge, on picket- 
ing, 275 

Mahomet and the communal 

system, 154, 155 

Mahoney,T. J., quoted, 27 5 n., 
280 

Maine, Bureau of Industrial 
Statistics of, on cheapened food- 
supply, 329 

Majority, wrong-headed, worst 
tyrant known, 255 

' ' Making Work ",212,217,218 



650 



Index. 



Mallock, W. H., on wages' 
share of product, 107, no; on 
improved condition of working 
classes, 331 w. 

Managers, of government in- 
stitutions, 227; of political 
pulls versus managers of in- 
dustry, 228 

Marcosson, Isaac F., quoted, 
261 n. 

Marriage {see also home) 
feudal disposal in, 47 

Marx, Karl, 107 ; "rich richer 
and poor poorer", and his 
"bronze law", 345 

Massachusetts, Torrens sys- 
tem in, 84; increase of wages 
in, 330; improved condition 
of machinists in, 330 w.; pro- 
bated estates in, 331 ; police in, 
480; and the Bell Telephone 
Co., 569, 570; personal-property 
tax in, 581 w.; taxation of 
mortgages in, 611 

Master and Servant {see also 
service), 196 ff. 

Mayo-Smith, Prof., on "un- 
earned increment", 61; on 
prices, 329; on profit, 340 

Meat Inspection Bill, 138 

Metropolitan Traction Com- 
pany, broad-minded manage- 
ment of, 429 

Meyer, Hugo R., on muni- 
cipal operation in Great Brit- 
ain, 449 ff., 525 

Michelet, J., on effect of pri- 
vate property in land, 51 n. 

Milan, pipe-galleries under 
sidewalks of, 444 

Militarism, decline with bar- 
barism, 48, 156 ff.; effect of 
Wars of the Roses upon, 48 ; 
a form of status, 156; in 
Japan, 157; income-tax char- 
acteristic of, 570 

Mill, John Stuart, proposes 
government ownership of land, 
55; on law of wages, 306; on 
overgovernment, 448; on real- 



ty-tax, 588; on the ideal gov- 
ernment, 624 

Mine Workers, United, re- 
striction of output, 215 

Minimum Wage, and sliding 
scale, 1 1 1 ; " versus living wage, 
286; Prof. Seager on the, 286; 
in Australasia, 292 

Minors, contractual disabili- 
ties of, 187 ff. 

Missouri, experience with rail- 
ways, 399 

Mitchell, John, on loss due to 
strikes, 252 

Money {see also paper money; 
silver), government affects 
worth of, 8 ; government manu- 
factures, 9; can be hired by 
the man who can use it well, 
117; when to be paid back, 
168; legal tender, 187; power 
to print paper, questioned by 
many lawyers, 187; not much 
of it essential to enjoyment, 
348; reasons for stud^dng, 359; 
general considerations on, 359 
ff.; Tom Watson on, 359; bar- 
ter and, 360; swindling by, 
361; kinds of, 361; qualities 
of, 362; legal tender of bad, 
362; definition, 363; bad buys 
less than good, 363; value in 
paper, 363; fiat money, 364; 
token money, 364; redemption 
money, 364; some American 
experience, 366 ff-. ; paper money 
cheats creditors, 366 ; and raises 
prices, 367; "never mind Eu- 
rope", 367; effect of money 
not redeemable in gold, 367; 
depreciation of silver dollar, 
368; why coins not made 
heavier, 369; American re- 
monetization in '78 and '90, 
369; cheap-money fallacy, 370 
ff.; the rapacious fooling the 
ignorant, 370; who profits by 
light-weight silver ?, 371; poor 
not the debtor class, 372; rior 
the class that handles least 



Index. 



651 



gold, 372; the panic of '93, 
372 {see also panic of '93) ; 
government banking, 375; 
' ' sixteen to one " , 376; im- 
proved trade balance" supplies 
gold, 377; light-weight silver 
money no new scheme, 378; 
poor, one of the social pana- 
ceas, 378; money questions no 
longer a distinct issue, 378; 
needs for the future, 380 ff.; 
best safeguard, 380; gold the 
safest material, 381; paper 
better than light-weight silver, 
381; safety in large bills, 38 1; 
no absolutely safe material for, 
381; only safe silver dollar, 
382; objections to all govern- 
ment notes, 382; 3^et coin in- 
sufficient, 383; good paper cur- 
rency preferable, 384; but not 
from government 385; essen- 
tials of banknotes, 385; "wild- 
cat" money, 385; essentials of 
a sound system, 386; rag 
money, 386; basis for elastic 
currency, 387; no safe cur- 
rency based on commercial 
paper, 388; farmer's needs, 
389 ff.; cheap, 536; a medium 
of exchange, 550; superfluous, 
603 

Money-Lending, government 
success in, 459 

Monopolies {see also compe- 
tition; corporations; trusts), 
126, 132 ff. ; statute against, 
in Parliament, 126: American 
courts and, 126; objection to, 
127; limit to property rights, 
136; state control, 136; against 
common and statute law, 136; 
law of 1890 against, 136; diffi- 
culty of getting advantages out 
of anti-monopoly laws, 136; 
controlled by corporations, 138; 
state interferences with, 139; 
natural, 144 ff., 526; why 
railroads are, 145; franchises, 
145 ; become personal property. 



146; state competition with, 
291; and privilege, 463; the 
ideal field of the state when 
practicable, 468 ; municipaliza- 
tion a defence against, 471; 
government regulation of natu- 
ral, 526, 627; government ser- 
vice outside of demoralizing, 
528; social and artificial, 627 

Moral Atmosphere created by 
Gautama, 93 ; by Christ, 93 

Morality, growth of, 115; 
sound, promulgators of, create 
value in material things, 102 

Morrisey, Grand Master, on 
contract-breakers, 158 

Mortgages {see also land; 

REAL property), 70, 76, 123; 

chattels, 150; double taxation 
of, 608 ff. ; a debt, not a value, 
608; mortgagor generally pays 
tax indirectly, 609; not prop- 
erly real estate, 610; in differ- 
ent states, 610; mortgagor pay- 
ing mortgagee's tax, 611; why 
tax mortgages and not notes?, 
612 

Mulhall on wages in England, 
331, 332; on taxation, 531 

Municipal Corruption, Ameri- 
can, 473 

Municipal Difficulties, Ameri- 
can, 473 ff . ; New York in 
1870, 473; in 1894, 474; city 
works the plums of politicians, 
474; New York in 1898, 474; 
national parties in local affairs, 
475 ff. ; this partly caused by 
method of electing U. S. sena- 
tors, 476; bad mixing local 
politics with state and national, 
477; civil-service reform as a 
remedy, 478; Professor Good- 
now on separation of state and 
local functions, 479: educa- 
tion, 480; police, 480; Ameri- 
ca alone in confusing local and 
national politics, 481; Ameri- 
can wealth and good nature 
promote carelessness, 482 ; debts 



652 



Index. 



of municipalities, 482; cor- 
ruption of voters under the 
guise of charity, 483; pro- 
letariat voting, 484; Tilden 
Commission's proposed remedy, 
485; local suffrage rights differ 
from others, 485 

Municipalities, English, dog- 
in-the-manger policy of, 450; 
obstructive, 451 ; strangling pri- 
vate enterprise, 451, 470 

Municipalization {see also mu- 
nicipal difficulties), best 
where people watch it most, 
396, 415, 435; of railroads, 420 
ff.; of waterworks, 432 ; of gas- 
works, 435, 436; Prof. Daniels 
quoted, 436 ; in New York, 437 ; 
of electricity, 440; of the tele- 
phone, 442 ; tunnels for pipes, 
wires, etc., 4/' 3; of advertising 
signs, 445; Piatonists and Aris- 
totelians on, 447; obstructive, 
451; especially to inventive 
talent ,470; dangerous to purity 
of government, 453; objected 
to in Glasgow, 454 t^.; English 
elections against, 455; leaves 
out able men, 455; Australa- 
sian experience with, 456 ff • ; 
summ.ary and conclusions, 468 ; 
in England municipal trad- 
ing increases taxation with- 
out proportionate results, 469 ; 
desirable only as defence against 
monopoly, 471; as training in 
citizenship, 471 ; least in United 
States, 524; increases with inde- 
pendence, 524; decreases with 
police control, 524; increases 
with good local government, 
525; necessary limits, 526; 
mainly determined by natural 
monopoly, 526 

Municipal Operation, of trams 
in London, 421; two reasons 
for, 424; Great Britain versus 
America, 426; deteriorating 
private service may compel, 
450; latest aspects of, 447 ff . ; 



in Great Britain, 447 ; retards 
development, 449 ; municipal 
ownership loaded with, in Great 
Britain, 452; in Omaha, 461; 
Political Science Association on, 
462 ; a question of democracy 
on trial, 465 ; has its largest fol- 
lowing among those who pay 
no taxes, 466; in a university 
town and a labor town^ 466; 
fallacious reasoning, 467; taxes 
increased with, 531 

Municipal Ownership {see also 
municipal operation), Hearst 
and, 395; Prof. H. R. Meyer on, 

449 ^• 

Municipal Trading {see also 

municipalization), opposition 
to, 42 1 ; Major Darwin on, 
442, 447, 448; Lord Avebury 
on, 448, 454 11. ; Robert Donald 
on, 454 n.; taxation and debt 
increased by, 455, 469; Parlia- 
ment and, 481; housing the 
poor, 493 

Murders and trade-unions, 254 

Museums, 490 

Names, no magic in, 237 

Napoleon III. makes over 
Paris, 493 

National Association of Manu- 
facturers, 261 

National Citizens' Industrial 
Association, 261 

National Government, 11, 18; 
in local politics, 475, 481 

National Metal Trades Asso- 
ciation, 261 n. 

National Municipal League, 
420 n. 

Natural Law and civic law, 
265 if. 

Nature, laws of, 23, 114; 
when an over-indulgent parent, 
26; a hard mother to the in- 
effective man, 114 

Navies produce value, 102 

Necessities, prices of, tend to 
keep up in hard times, 346 



Index. 



653 



Need and desert, 240 

Negotiable Paper, 148 ff. 

New Hampshire, personal- 
property tax in, 581 11. 

New South Wales {see also 
AUSTRALASIA), state Operation 
of railways in, 409 

Newton, Isaac, 93 

New York City, instances of 
scamping work in, 212; the 
stone-polishers' union and the 
Hotel Savoy, 217; street-rail- 
way strike in, 273; ferry fran- 
chises in, 395; municipal own- 
ership of street railways in, 
423; subway in, 423; frightful 
swindles in connection with 
water-supply of, 433; munici- 
palization of lighting plant and 
surface railways, 437; only one 
voter in ten a taxpayer, 472; 
municipal difficulties in, in 
1870, 473; in 1894, 474; edu- 
cation in, 480 ; police in, 480 ; 
management of parks in, 490 ; 
Fine Art Commission of, 491; 
housing the poor in, 494 ; 
Provident Loan Society in, 498 ; 
Charity Organization Society 
in, 499 ; most expensive city in 
the world, 538; secret stills in, j 
539; only one man in twenty- 
five pays direct taxes, 558 ; per- 
sonal-property tax in, 579, 
580 n.; bad government of, an 
obstacle to real-estate invest- 
ment, 592; equalization of 
taxation in, 593; single tax in, 
600; separated tax in, 601; 
rental-value tax in, 604; tax- 
ation of mortgages in, 609 

New York State, interest law 
in, 119; labor laws of, 284; 
punishes attempts at suicide, 
285; accidents to laborers in, 
287 ; idiots vote in, 486 n. 

New Zealand (see also Aus- 
tralasia), adjustment of labor 
troubles in, 299; first Com- 
pulsory Arbitration Act, 299; 



Judge Backhouse on, 308; gov- 
ernment coal-mines in, 459; 
state life-insurance in, 460 ; 
old-age pensions in, 501; tax- 
ation of mortgages in, 611 

Niagara Falls, neighborhood 
of, improved by state, 139; 
a natural monopoly, 144 

Non-taxpayers, who are, 506 

Non-unionists, their right to 
work, 266; immigrants enter 
U. S. as, 284 

Non-voters, where best taken 
care of, 487 

North Carolina, secret stills 
in, 539 

Northern Securities Co., gov- 
ernment suit against, 137 

Nostrums, rapid accumula- 
tion of, 625 

Notes : see promissory notes 

Oath, 164 

Obligation of Contracts, 317 

Obvious Direct Taxes: see 

DIRECT TAXES 

Ohio, labor bureaus in, 500; 
and the Standard Oil Co., 569; 
personal-property tax in, 580 n. 

Old-Age Pensions, 314, 500, 

501 

Omaha, government opera- 
tion in, 461 

Open Shop, 251, 261 n., 262; 
strikes against, illegal, 270 

Opinion, paradoxes of, 104 

Opportunity, no lack of, 112; 
able to embrace it, 112 

Option, 178, 191 

Organizers of transportation 
and exchange produce value, 
102 

Orphans, care of, 517 

Orphans' Court, 47 

Output, restriction of, 215 

Overwork another name for 
overworry, 348 

Panaceas: see social pana- 
ceas 



654 



Index. 



Panama Canal, material to 
be used in building, 215 

Panic of '93, 372 ff. ; begins 
with alarm in Europe, 373; 
business suffers 373; Kansas 
"triesa new way of "bleeding", 
374; hoarding begins, 374; 
the banks and the poor, 374; 
Cleveland stops the panic, 374; 
but at heavy cost, 375 

Paper Money, 361 ff. ; cheats 
creditors, 366; raises prices, 
367; better than light-weight 
silver, 381; safety in large 
bills, 381; objections to all 
government notes, 382; good 
paper currency, 384 

Paris, public workshops in, 
30, 230, 231; tunnel system in 
sewers of, 444; gas-pipes and 
electric wires under sidewalks 
of, 444; deteriorating under 
universal suffrage, 486; opera 
a botch, 490; corruption at- 
tending street openings in, 493 ; 
charity schools in, 520 

Parks, 490, 505 

Parks, Sam, 263, 297 

Parliament, power to change 
constitution, 66; people can 
change at any time, 66; statute 
against monopolies, 126; and 
labor, 270, 277; empowers mu- 
nicipalities to supply facilities, 
450, 451; and municipal trad- 
ing, 481 

Partnership, 121, 195 

Part Payment, in contracts, 

174 
Party Walls, 81 
Passaic, bad water-supply of, 

433 

Pasteur and bacteria in water, 

433 

Paternalism, 285; too much, 
enervating and against liberty, 
286 

Paupers, children of divorced 
parents, 2; in London, 332; 
constitutional, 349, 507; neg- 



lect increases the number, 508; 
wastes and stupidities in taxa- 
tion largely due to votes of, 622 

Pawnshops, 497 

Peabody, George, his fortune 
rightly acquired, 114; his rise, 
155; benefactions of, 490 

Peel, Sir Robert, police made 
a national body by, 480 

Penn, William, fairness of 
h'is purchase of Pennsylvania, 58 

Pennsylvania, purchase of, by 
Penn for a few beads a fair 
bargain, 58; labor laws of, 284 

Pensions, old-age, 314, 500, 
501; and the tariff, 546 

Personal Property {see also 
ability; capital; wealth), 
evolution of rights in, 42, 43, 
87 ff.; defined, 67; transfer of, 
69; law of, 148 ff . ; seldom 
registered, 148; passed by en- 
dorsement, 148; can take one's 
own wherever found 149; own- 
ership can be lost without 
neglect, 150; can be mortgaged 
without registry, 150; agree- 
ments made regarding, 151; 
the great field of contract, 151; 
law of contracts concerning, 
173 ff. ; transfer of ownership 
of, 177; quack schemes f o r 
distributing rights in, 208 ff.; 
remedies on trial, 289 ff.; 
proved methods for diffusing 
rights in, 325 ff . ; four fifths 
exempt from taxation in New 
York, 598 

Personal-Property Tax, 573 
ff.; uncertain of diffusion, 573; 
tends to double taxation, 574; 
effect on prosperity, 575; Wells 
quoted, 575; personal prop- 
erty hard to find or appraise, 
577; a premium on lying, 578; 
views of authorities, 578; op- 
eration of natural laws, 578; 
abolition of, proposed, 578; 
in New York, 579; statistics, 
5 7 9 w. ; " publicity ' ' a foolish 



Index. 



6SS 



means toward a foolish end, 582 
"homogeneity" faUacy, 5S2 
effect on corporations, 583 ff. 
abandoned in many places, 618 

Personal Relations, law of con- 
tracts for, I go ff. 

Philadelphia, bad water-sup- 
ply of, 433; municipal manage- 
ment of gasworks in, 436, 437 

Philanthropyj wise, necessary 
to civilization, 349 

Philosophers control policies 
of nations, 363 

Physiocrats, single-tax the- 
ory of, 596 

Picketing, 28, 282; unlawful, 
275, 410 n.; Judge McPherson 
on, 275; Judge Quarles on, 276 

Piecework, 213 

Pipe-Galleries, underground, 

443 

Pitney, Vice-Chancellor, quot- 
ed, 279 

Platonists and Aristotelians 

on mtmicipalization, 447 

Pledges (for loans), 151, 185 

Police, 480 

Political Science Association, 

testimony on municipal opera- 
tion, 462 ff. 

Politicians running industries, 
140 

Politics, and "civics", xi, 4, 
5; duties of rich men in, 355; 
only "self-made" rich men en- 
couraged to go into, 355; ef- 
fect of branch banks on, 390; 
in municipalization, 451; city 
works and, 474, 485; national 
parties in local, 475 ff.; America 
alone in confusing national and 
local, 481; under mask of 
charity, 483 ; in Chicago labor 
bureau, 499; tariff the cause 
of frightful corruption, 545; 
pensions and, 546 

Poor Class, get larger propor- 
tion of wealth than the rich, 
22in., 331 tt.; not the debtor 
class, 372; nor the class that 



handles least gold, 372; super- 
fluous money given to, 603 

Poor Law, the English, 29, 
230, 231 

Porter, R, P., on municipal 
trading in England, 454 n., 

456 

' Possession nine points of 
the law", 175 

Postal Savings-Banks, 332 n., 

498 

Post-Office, 411; favoritism 
to papers and periodicals, 412; 
in the U. S. run at a loss, 414; 
government versus private en- 
terprise, 414; C. Y\[. Burrows 
on postal policy, 414 n.; stamps 
from private companies, 415; 
best where people watch it 
most, 415 ; Evening Post quoted, 
418 

Poverty {see also charity; 
education; recreations and 
assistance; wealth), cause of, 
61, 208, 220; good resulting 
from, 115; seldom blameless, 
348 ; constitutional paupers, 
349, 507; government aid, 350, 

351 

Powderly, T. V., cited, 297 
Prescription, rights by, 74 
President, election of the, 
478 

Prices, regulated by demand 
and supply, 129; advance of, 
in America, 190 1-6, 132; in 
oil, 132 ; low prices alone justify 
trusts, 135; law of, 136; trade- 
unions agreeing to keep up, 138 ; 
fixing, 139; decline since mid- 
dle of nineteenth century, 328 ff. ; 
decrease comes largely from 
capital's share of product, 339; 
and from labor's increased abil- 
ity, 340; and from diffusion of 
honesty, 341; effect of labor- 
saving machinery, 344 ff . ; in 
bad times, 346, 347 ; paper 
money raises, 367; under high 
tariffs, 377; affected by amount 



656 



Index. 



of money in circulation, 383; 
and high taxes generahy, 53 8 

Principal, authorized acts 
bind, 190; responsible for 
agent's wrong-doing, 193 

Printers, strike of, 88, 251, 
254; making work for, 217 

Prisoners: see criminals 

Prison Labor, 512 

Privacy, 565 

Private Property, 40 ; limited, 
40; evolution of rights of, 42; 
sources, 42 ; evolution of, in 
land, 48; stimulates ability, 49 ; 
increases with civilization, 51; 
in land, effect of, 51-?^.; ad- 
vantages of, in land exagger- 
ated, 52 ; all schemes to abolish, 
are retrogressive, 62; of uni- 
versal importance, 62 ; evolves 
with contract and freedom, 155; 
essential to advance beyond 
status, 157; general govern- 
ment production attacks, 229 

Probate Courts, 47, 206 

Product, destroying, 217; 
cheapened by labor-saving ma- 
chinery, 346 

Production, not all by hand, 
101; large, is cheap, 133; not 
commerce, 137; increase in, 
336; rising with shorter work- 
day, 338, 339; variety of, dif- 
fuses wealth, 343 ; decrease in, 
in bad times, 346 

"Profit in the last hour", 
fallacy of, 337 

Profit-sharing, municipal, 422 

Progress in the betterment of 
man's estate, 325; made under 
individualism, 232, 235; high- 
pressure, under socialism, 
241 

Progressive Taxation, 565 

Proletariat, politics and the, 
484, 485 

Promises versus contracts, 161 

Promissory Notes, 76 

Promoters of railways and 
trusts produce value, 102, 103; 



heavy toll taken by, 104; and 
combinations, 134 

Property, Rights of, {see also 

PERSONAL property; PRIVATE 

property; real property,) 
40 ff . ; barbarian 's idea of, espe- 
cially in land, 45 ; not all tangi- 
ble, 109; as capital, 116 ff. ; lim- 
ited, 136 

"Protection" (of industries) 
{see also tariff duties), 377, 
544, 547 ; effects of the Civil 
War on the tariff, 545; wages 
under, 548 ; numbers concerned, 
549; who benefited by, 549; 
gluts, 550; effect on trusts, 
551; labor trusts eager for, 551; 
conclusions, 551; causes of 
American system, 552; the 
tariff changed twenty-five times 
between 1862 and 1890, 558; 
results of, 616; injustice and 
corruption of protective sys- 
tem, 619; manufacturers and, 
622 

Providence, R, I.» revenue 
from street-railway franchises 
in 423, 428 

"Providential" Facts, 323 
Prussia, Dr. Soetbeer on in- 
come-tax statistics of, :i)T)^', cost 
of collecting taxes in, 558 n. 
Public, coercing, 255 ff. 
Publicity, desirability of, 467 
Public Policy, 204, 270 
Public-service Corporations, 
Prof. Adams on, 410; Prof. 
Rowe on, 464 

Public Utilities, Commissioner 
of, 422 

Public Works {see also muni- 
cipal difficulties; munici- 
palization; railroads; roads; 
street railways; water- 
works), extra-municipal J 391 
ff.; roads, 391; bridges, 393; 
ferries and docks, 395; rail- 
roads, 396; post-office, 411; 
telegraph, 415; municipal, 420 
ff. ; street railways, 420; water- 



Index. 



657 



works, 43 2 ; gasworks, 43 5 ; 
electricity, 440 ; telephone, 442 ; 
tearing up streets, 443 ; tun- 
nels for pipes, wires, etc., 443; 
advertising signs, 445; sum- 
mary and conclusions on mu- 
nicipalization of. 468 ii., 523 
ff . ; city works tiie plums of 
politicians, 474, 485 ; and super- 
fluous money, 603 

" Pull", the man with a, 37, 
142 ; in railroad management, 
407; in education, 522; in tax- 
ation, 591 

Pullman, G. M., and civic 
responsibility, 142 

Pursuit of Happiness, right to 
work, 26 flf. ; rights to the, 39 ff. ; 
a general name for many rights, 
39; restricted, 39,40, 63 

Quantum meruit, 167 

Quantum valebat, 168; some 
limits of, 1S8; enrichment, 188 

Quarles, Judge J. V., on 
picketing, 276 

Quasi-Contractual Relations, 
law of , 199 ff.; trusteeship, 199; 
assignees, 200; safeguards, 200; 
administrators, 201 ; devolution 
of intestate estates, 201; ex- 
ecutors, 202; wills, 202; guard- 
ianship, 206; need of probate 
courts, 206; trustees for defec- 
tives, 207; court supervision of 
trustees in general, 207 

" Quick " Securities, 384 

Rae, John, on eight-hour day, 

337 

Rag Money, 386 

Railroad Rate Bill, 138, 405, 
406 

Railroads {see also eminent 
domain; right of way; street 
railways), German employees' 
accident insurance, 30; right of 
way, 64; right to build often 
sold before work is begun, 109; 
service improved by commercial 



travelers, 129; and anti-trust 
law of 1890, 138; Railroad 
Rate Bill, 138, 405, 406; rates 
regulated by law, 139; setting 
a limit to profits they shall 
divide, 139; why monopolies, 
145; streets taken for, 145; in 
United States, 396 ff . ; in Eng- 
land, 397, 401; in France, 397; 
in Germany, 397 ff.; in Italy, 
397, 398, 407; superior service 
in England and America, 397; 
Bryan favors government oper- 
ation of, 399; Roosevelt and, 
399; relations between govern- 
ment and, 400, 401; American 
construction less thorough than 
in Europe, 400; and inci- 
dentally less careful of safety, 
401 ; grade-crossings almost un- 
known in Europe, 401; freight 
discriminations, 401; consoli- 
dation and competition, 402; 
freight and passenger rates 
comparatively low and steadily 
declining, 403, 405; consti- 
tutional questions, 403 ; char- 
ters for, 404; taxation of fran- 
chises, 404 ; regulating charges, 
405; bankrupt railroads, 405; 
unsuccessfulness of government 
regulation not complete argu- 
ment for government manage- 
ment, 406; "labor" under gov- 
ernment operation, 408 ; in Can- 
ada, 408 ; Canadian experience, 
408 ; government aid and regu- 
lation, 411 

Ramapo scheme of water- 
supply, 433 

Raw Material a source of 
property. 42 ; derived origi- 
nally from land and sea, 44 

Real Estate : see real prop- 
erty 

Real Property {see also deeds ; 
land; private property; re- 
alty-taxes), rights to, 40 ff., 
44 ff. ; early conditions, 44; 
under feudal system, 46; title. 



6s8 



Index, 



how acquired, 59; occupier's 
rights in improvements, 60; 
law of rights in, 65 ff.; defined, 
67; laws protecting ownership, 
68 ; damages for trespass, 68 ; 
right of ejectment, 68; trans- 
fers, 69 ff . ; contracts of sale, 
■69, 70; deeds, 70, 76, 77, 78; 
life-estate, 72; dower and cour- 
tesy, 72; registry, 73, 77; title- 
search, 73; judgments, 74: 
prescriptions, 74; title insur- 
ance, 74; clouds on title, 75; 
delivery of deed, 76 ; mortgages, 
76; bonds, 76; equity of re- 
demption, 76; leases, 77; fraud- 
ulent transfer, 78; technical 
meaning of "estate", 78; es- 
tates for years, 78, 79; life-es- 
tates, 80 ; estates at will, 80 ; 
appurtenances, 80 ; riparian 
owners, 81; restricted estates, 
d,7,; idle, 563; taxation re- 
stricted to, 600; some unim- 
proved, useless, 601 

Realty: see real property 
Realty-Taxes {see also appro- 
priation-tax; SINGLE tax; 
SEPARATED TAx), in general, 
586 ff. ; objections, 586; his- 
tory, 586; incidental to high 
civilization, 587; diffusion, 587; 
views of economists, 588; fact 
versus theory, 588; effects on 
producers, 589; stimulate pro- 
duction, 589; sure to be paid, 
590; easy to assess, 590; cheap- 
est to collect, 591; all owners 
must always pay part, 591; 
summary for and against, 591; 
opinion of the Fathers, 592; 
equalization, 593; varieties, 595 
ff. ; realty-tax proper, 595; 
single tax, 595, 596; separated 
tax, 601: appropriation-tax, 
603; rental-value tax, 604; not 
a real-estate tax, 604; not 
double taxation 605; should 
be on one residence only, 605; 
shifting, 606; franchise-tax, 606; 



virtually a 'real-estate" tax, 
606 

Reciprocity Treaties, 542, 547 

Records, law judges people by 
their, "197 

Recreations and Assistance 

(see also charity; education), 
490 ff. ; general government 
production attacks property, 
contract and charity, 229; mu- 
seums and libraries, 490 ; parks, 
490; clearing slums, 491 ; hous- 
ing the poor, 494 ; personal con- 
veniences, 494; army outfitting, 
etc., 494, 495; economy and 
civilization both require charity, 
495; hospitals and asylum.s, 
496; relief to individual poor, 
497; pawnshops, 497 ; savings- 
banks, 498 ; lodging-houses, 
498; Charity Organization So- 
ciety, 499; labor bureaus, 499; 
insurance against idleness of 
old age, 500; general conclu- 
sions regarding charity, 501; 
mutual help better than gov- 
ernment help, 502 ; the Church, 
the State, the philanthropist, 
502; taxpayers and, 503 

Redemption-Money, 364 

Reeves, W. P., father of first 
Compulsory Arbitration Act, 
298, 299; quoted, 301, 307 ff . ; 
arguments for enlarging func- 
tions of state, 461 

Registry (of real estate), 73; 
rights of third parties, 77 

Regulation, government, of 
monopolies in America, 405, 406 

Relief, public, (see also char- 
ity,) 30 

Religion and law, 164 

Rent, 60, 118 

Rental-Value Tax (see also 
realty-taxes), 603 ff. ; on 
consumption, 604; not a real- 
estate tax, 604 ; New York and, 
604; may ultimately replace 
vampire-taxes, 615; Prof. Sea- 
ger on, 618 



Index, 



659 



Representative defined, 17 
Reputation, right to, 41 
Respondeat superior, 193 
Revenue : see taxation 
Ricardo, D., on realty-tax, 
5S8 

Richmond, revenue from 
street-railway franchise in, 423, 
428; municipal gasworks in, 

437 

*' Rich richer and poor 
poorer", 345, 556; not true in 
civilized countries, 328 

Right, the adjective, defined, 

113 

Right of Way {see also ap- 
purtenances), railroad 64 

Right to Work {see also 

SCAMPING work; STRIKES; 

work), defined, 26 ff . ; and 
trade-unions, 26; subject only 
to the state, 26; interferences, 
28, 38, 214; duties condi- 
tioning, 28; strikes, 28; boy- 
cott, 28; involves rights of 
property and exchange, 40; 
limitations, 40, 255; involves 
right to contract, 40; and to 
reputation, 41; govemm.ent 
protection, 41, 409; non- 
unionists', 266; property in, 282 
Rights, defined, 6, 21 ff., 23; 
protection of, a function of gov- 
ernment, 6; citizen's, regulated 
by nation in two fields, 1 1 ; im- 
pose duties, 2 1 ; moral and 
legal, 22; classified, 23; rights 
measured by duties, a law of 
Nature, 23; and duties imply 
each other, 23, 507; to life, 25 
ff. ; to work, 26 ff., 410; to 
liberty, 32 ff . ; Bill of, 35; to 
pursuit of happiness, 39 ff . ; 
to real property, 40 ff., 44 ff. ; 
of property, 40 ff., 44, 109, 
116 ff., 136; under contract, 
40, 152 ff., 159 ff.; to rep- 
utation, 41; to a home, 53; 
to a living, 54; in improve- 
ments, 60; of way, 64; by 



prescription, 74; value of some 
intangible ones, 109; to de- 
mand versus to prohibit, 152 

Riparian Owners, 81 

Roads, land beside, 81; in 
general, 391 ff . ; as spreading 
civilization, 391; evolution in 
our race, 392; bad American 
organization, 392; local inde- 
pendence obstructive of good, 
393 ; splendid English, 393 ; tolls 
on, 393 

Robbery, government taking 
land by, 56; schemes of, by 
taxation, 568, 604 

Rochester, street railways in, 
427 

Rockefeller, J. D., and the 
gateway of opportunity, 239 

Rogers, Thorold, on income- 
tax, 571 

Romans the great road-build- 
ers, 391 ff- 

Roosevelt, Theodore, and 
unionists, 265; and injunc- 
tions, 281; his coal-strike com- 
mission, 298; and the rail- 
roads, 399 

Rowe, Prof., on pub'ic-ser- 
vice corporations, 464 

Rudolph of Hapsburg and the 
feudal system, 155 

Ruskin and socialism, 233 

Russia, serfs of, 45, 156; 
communal land in, 45, 62 ; with- 
out a constitution, 66; labor 
in, 90 ; not much changed from 
condition of status, 156; most 
forward in socialism, 456; tax- 
ation in, 533; and the Dingley 
Act, 543 

Ryots of India 45 

Sale, contracts of, for real 
estate, 69, 70; and delivery, 
173; as affected by statute of 
frauds, 173; by part payment, 
174; under prior lien, 175 

Salvation Army's Farm Col- 
onies, 53 



66o 



Index. 



San Francisco, earthquake in, 
235, 244, 434; and street rail- 
ways, 424; personal-property 
tax in 580 n. 

Savings, protection of rights 
in, 116; of laborers now put 
into provident societies in- 
stead of homes, 124 

Savings-Banks, 332 n., 374, 
498; taxation of, 584 

Scamping Work, 209; "The 
Crime of Mrs. Derrick", 210 n.\ 
further illustrations, 210 n.; 
keeps the scamper out of jobs, 
212; scamper gets only one 
profit but pays many, 213 ; and 
cannot long receive good wages, 
213; piecework, 213; pretend- 
ing and forbidding labor, 214; 
no need of industrial suicide by, 
343; and taxation, 536 

Schurz, Carl, as a citizen, 355 

Scotland, Glasgow Bank fail- 
ure, 122; improved dwellings of 
the poor in, 332 n., 493 ; branch 
banks in, 390; municipal gas- 
plants in, 436; extension of 
street lighting in, 436; objec- 
tion to municipal trading in, 
454 n.; why Scotch whiskey 
smells of smoke, 539 

Scribner, Charles, spirit that 
actuated, 142 

Scutage (shield-money) im- 
posed by Henry II., 48, 587 

Seager, Prof., on trusts, 135; 
on conspiracy, 274, 275; on 
labor laws, 283 ; "protecting the 
laborer against himself", 284; 
on regulation of wages and 
hours, 285; on the minimum 
wage, 286; on rent-tax, 618 

Seal (on instruments), 70, 71, 
75, 123, 168 

Seattle, municipal car-lines 
rejected by voters, 424 

Securities, 122; European in- 
vestments in American, 123; 
quick, 384 

Seisin, livery of, 69 



Self-defence, state's right of, 
288 

Seligman, Prof., on personal- 
property tax, 581 n.\ on realty- 
tax, 588 

Senate, U. S., ten thousand 
years of history required to get 
up to, 242 ; economic investi- 
gations by, 329; method of 
electing members of, bad for 
local government, 476, 478 

Separated Tax, on land ex- 
clusive of improvements, 601 
ff. ; in New York, 601; build- 
ings diffuse taxes more readily 
than land, 602; improvement 
encouraged by, 602 

Serfdom, 153 

Serfs of Russia, 45 

Service, 164^ 196 ff . ; con- 
tracts for, 167; discharge for 
cause stops pay for rest of 
term, 196; discharge without 
cause, or leaving for cause, does 
not, 197; both employer and 
employee bound for entire term, 
197 

Settlements (University, etc.), 
484, 520 

Shaw, Albert, on municipal 
government, 420 £f., 482 n. 

Shea, C. P., on principles of 
trade-unionism, 178 

Shearman, T. G., on street- 
railway franchises, 607 

Sherman Interstate Act, 138; 
unions and, 266 n. 

Shield-Money, 48, 586 

Ship of State not built for 
speed, 241 

Sickness: see disease 

Sigel, Franz, as a citizen, 355 

Signs, advertising, a source 
of municipal revenue, 445 

Sill, E. R., cited, 92 

Silver {see also money), agita- 
tion of 1890 destroyed values, 
102; price of, rising, 368; and 
the U. S. Treasury, 372 ff. ; 
supply of, 375 



Index. 



66i 



Single Tax, 595; paid by 
Nature, 582 ; Locke's theory, 
595; Henry George's, 595, 621; 
Walpole's, 596; physiocrats' 
theory, 596; diffusion on differ- 
ent grades of property, 597; 
agricultural land at a disad- 
vantage under, 597; local op- 
tion in taxation, 598; effect of, 
if suddenly imposed, 599; ex- 
perience, 600 ; an evolution that 
is nearly accomplished, 600; 
Australasians find it satisfac- 
tory, 600; boon to the poor, 
621; why delayed, 622 ff. 

"Sixteen to One" {see also 
money), 376 

Slavery, 153-155 

Slaves of America, 154 , 

Sliding Scale, m 

Slums, 491 ; clearing, pos- 
sible only under eminent do- 
main, 492 

Smith, Adam, on bad tax- 
laws, 532; on realty-tax, 588 

Smith, Postmaster-General 
quoted, 413 

Smugglers, 541 

Sociability, happiness in, 34 

Social Influence and Control, 
2 ; through the family, 2 ; 
through public opinion, imita- 
tion, education, and govern- 
ment, 3 

Socialism, 220 ff. ; Spencer 
and, 27, 570, 629; as a remedy 
for corruption and trusts, 140; 
attacks contract, 158; defined, 
225; would keep wages down, 
226; impracticability of politi- 
cal management, 226; losses to 
education, charity and liberty, 
226; forcing ability, 227; fu- 
tility of attempting it by emi- 
nent domain, 230; a premium 
on laziness, 230; effect on 
laborers, 230; would destroy 
freedom, 231; the unemployed, 
231; and individualism, 232; 
a vague name, 233 ; Ruskin and 



Tolstoy and, 233; four uses of 
the term, 234; against compe- 
tition, 234; earthquakes and 
fires under, 235; greed and 
graft and, 238; Jack London 
and, 239 ff. ; capitalism and, 
239; expression of the ideals 
of, 240; high -pressure progress 
under; 241, when possible, will 
be needless, 242; living wage 
and, 295; arbitration a step 
toward, 319; Russia most for- 
ward in, 456; logical conclu- 
sion of, is social war, 570 

Socialists, their hope of suc- 
cess, 242 ; and washerwomen, 

495 

Social Panaceas, 291, 472; 

socialism, 219 ff . ; strikes, 334; 
poor money, 378 

Society, its control of the in- 
dividual I ff. 

Soetbeer, Dr., on Prussian in- 
come-tax statistics, 333 
Soup-Houses, public, 31 
Sovereign defined, 12 
Spain, beggars in, 349 
Sparta, skill in theft a virtue 

in, 157 

Specific Performance, 198 

Speculation, legitimate, stead- 
ies prices, 353 

Spencer, Herbert, 93 ; and 
socialism, 27, 570, 629; created 
value in material things, 103; 
Law of Equilibration, 327; on 
American good nature, 483 

Squatters, 68 

Stamp-Taxes, 553; both di- 
rect and indirect, 554; often 
merely a petty nuisance, 554 

Standard Oil Co., 255; forced 
out of Ohio by taxation, 569 

Stanford, Leland, 238 

State Government, 10, 18 

State Socialism and status 
synonymous terms, 319 

Statistics, vice of, 458; value 
of, qualitative, 459 

Status, 154; versus contract. 



662 



Index. 



154; militarism a form, of, 156; 
why private property essential 
to advance beyond, 157; state 
socialism synonymous with, 

319 

Statute of Frauds, 69, 174, 

180; of Limitations, 74, 169 

Statute Law: see law 

Steam, industrial effect of, 

345 

Steamboats in competition, 

131 

Stephenson, George, influence 
exerted by his locomotive, 345 

Stewart, Alexander, econo- 
mies effected by, 98, loi; for- 
tune of, 114; usefulness of, 

353 

Stickney, A. B., on the rail- 
road problem, 402 
Stills, secret, 539 
Stock Exchanges, 123, 124 
Stocks, common and pre- 
ferred, 122; and bonds, differ- 
ences between, 123; not all 
dealt in at exchanges, 124; 
for whom good investments, 
124; by whom owned, 124; 
civic questions answered by, 
124; watered, 134; endorse- 
ment on, 149 

Street-Begging, 499 
Street-Openings, 492, 493 
Street Railways, 420 ff. ; evo- 
lution of, 420; in Germany, 
420; in England, 420; in 
Scotland, 420; in Ireland, 421; 
in Hamburg, 421; in. New York, 
428; municipal operation in- 
creasing in England, little on 
Continent, in America none, 
420; municipal sharing of pro- 
fits advancing in America, 422; 
government inspection of, 422; 
reasons for municipalization, 
424; in San Francisco, 424; 
increment in franchises, 428; 
should be leased but not sold, 
and each city's under one 
management, 428, 429; public 



should share in profits rather 
than receipts, 428 

Strikers {see also strikes), 
government suits against, 137 

Strikes {see also scamping- 
work), 104, 244 247 ft'., 411; 
when justifiable, 28; "The 
Crime of Mrs. Derrick", 210 n.; 
truckmen's, 88; printing, 88, 
251, 254; Prof. Adams on, 
252^ 410; leading statistics 
of, 252; non-union compared 
with union, 252; decrease of. 
since 1903, 253 ". funeral-drivers', 
256 ft.; in Chicago, 261 w.; 
when illegal, 263, 270, 271; 
avoiding, 263; right to, 267; 
against labor-saving machinery, 
270; street-railway .strike in 
New York, 273; and arbitra- 
tion courts 297; coal-strike 
commission, 298; in Austral- 
asia, 298, 307, 323; damages 
in, 301 ; in America, 324; in the 
twentieth century, 329; "sym- 
pathetic", im.mediate interest 
and the, 271, 311; conflicting 
laws on, 271 ff. ; effect of com- 
pulsory arlDitration on, 302; as 
affected by government owner- 
ship of railways, 408; railway, 
in New South Wales, 409 

Struggle for Existence ceasing 
to be a brute struggle, 630 

"Sturmsee" quoted, 259, 278, 
281 

Subways, 443, 444 

Succession Tax in England, 

Suffrage {ses also voters; 
UNIVERSAL suffrage), limita- 
tion of, 4S4 ff . ; in Europe gen- 
erally, 484, 485; plan of Tilden 
Commission, 485; in Berlin, 486; 
local rights differ from others, 
485; limited local, in all well- 
governed cities, 485; elevating 
the, 487; should be improved, 
629 

Sugar Trust, Knight case 



Index. 



663 



against, 137; and the Wilson 
Bill, 140, 546 

Supply and Demand, 129 

Supreme Court, on conspir- 
acy, 268; and eight-hour law, 
284; affirms propriety of labor 
laws, 285 ; appointment of, 47 8 ; 
income-tax of '94 declared un- 
constitutional by 553, 570; 
and taxation, 610 

Suretyship, 180 

Surrogate's Court, 47 

Sweating in Australasia, 
292—294 

Switzerland, roads in, 393 ; in- 
come-tax in, 571 

Taff-Vale Case, 277 
Tammany, 430, 463; organ- 
ized to influence voters, 483 
Tariff: see tariff duties; 

PROTECTION 

Tariff Bill, defeated by Sugar 
Trust, 140, 546; McKinley, 
546 ; Wilson, 546 

Tariff Duties {see also pro- 
tection), effect on prices, 377, 
541; encourage home produc- 
tion, 541; tariff wars, 542; the 
foreigner sometimes pays, 533, 
543 ; a weapon of war, 542 ; 
our hand against every man, 
543; early American experi- 
ence, 544; from the Revolu- 
tion to the Civil War, 544; 
since the Civil War, 545; in- 
dustrial effects, 546; both par- 
ties corrupted, 546; tariffs tend 
to expand, 547 ; an act of 
aggression, 547 ; on raw mate- 
rials, 547 ; protection and wages, 
548; numbers concerned, 549; 
gluts, 550; Atkinson on the 
tariff, 550; effect of protec- 
tion on trusts, 551; conclu- 
sion on protection, 551; causes 
of American system, 552; ex- 
pert opinion, 552; should be 
only on articles that cannot be 
produced at home, 616 



Tariff League, European, 
against the U. S., 543 

Taxation {sec also direct 
taxes; double taxation; in- 
direct taxes; personal-prop- 
erty tax; realty-taxes), a 
function of government, 6; 
taxes paid mostly by land- 
owners, 56; incorrect principles 
of, destroy value, 102; of 
franchises, 404; in Austral- 
asia, highest among civilized 
people, 457; increased, in Eng- 
lani by municipal trading 
without proportionate results, 
469; local taxes more than 
txuee "quarters of the national 
474; of commodities univer- 
sally used, 527; general con- 
siderations, 529 ff. ; not the 
only source of revenue, 529; 
interest and importance of the 
subject, 530 ; in history -making, 
530; everybody pays taxes 530; 
increased with municipal opera- 
tion, 531; Atkinson on, 531; 
rates in different countries, 531 ; 
methods influence rate, 531: 
and genera] well-being, 532 
taxes affect movements of capi- 
tal and ability, 533; civiliza- 
tion and, 533 ; opposite methods 
illustrated, 533 ; men gener- 
ally geese in questions concern- ' 
ing, 534, 559; direct and in- 
direct taxes, 534; shiftirig of 
taxes, 536; scamping work 
and, 536; for .maintenance of 
idle prisoners, 536; important 
principle of, 537; need of free 
competition, 537; prices high- 
est where taxes are highest, 
538; raised by tariff duties a 
weapon, 551; ideal, 564; tax- 
ing incomes tends to double, 
565; progressive, 565; as affect- 
ing benevolence, 568; schemes 
of robbery by, 568, 604; per- 
sonal-property tax tends to 
double, 574; taxes not paid on 



064 



Index. 



bonds, 577; abolition of per- 
sonal, proposed, 578; corpora- 
tions, 583 ff. ; franchises should 
be taxed, 584; equalization, 
c;93; local option, 598; re- 
stricted to real property, 600; 
double taxation, 608 ff.; of 
mortgages, 608 £f. ; at the 
source, 609, 613, 614; bottom 
principle of, 609; U. S. Su- 
preme Court and, 610; excises 
multiply, 613; taxing liens, 
613; summary and conclu- 
sions, 615 ff.; 'perfect, not for 
imperfect people, 615; vam- 
pire-taxes needed now, 615; 
rental-value tax may ultimately 
replace them, 615; inquisition- 
taxes intolerable, 616; the re- 
mote ideal, 617; Nature pays 
some taxes, 617; and can pay 
all, 618; evolution of, 618; 
the ideal, 619; future of, 619; 
single tax no hardship to land- 
owners, 620; amortization, 620; 
single tax a boon to the poor, 
621; how to include all citi- 
zens, 622; wastes and stupidi- 
ities, in, largely due to pauper 
voters, 622; causes of delay, 
622 £f.; ignorance and self-seek- 
ing. 62'2 ; in the U. S. Constitu- 
tion, 623 

Taxpayers, in New York, 472, 
^!^8: suffrage rights of, 484 ff-i 
Til den Commission's plan, 485; 
graded in Germany, 486; and 
recreations, 503; increase in 
their number the best security 
for an orderly and happy com- 
munity. 505; many improve- 
ments not at taxpayer's expense, 
505; Prof. Trent on indirect, 

^Telegraph and government, 

Telephone, municipalization 
of the, 442 
Tenant, 79 ff. 
Tender, 186; kinds of money 



in, 187; determined by Con-' 
gress, 187 ; bad money as legal, 
362 

Tennessee, secret stills in, 539 
Texas, suffrage in, 484 
Theatre in Germany and 
France, 490 

Thiers, L. A., on diffusion of 
taxation, 536 

Things, made to embody 
thoughts, 92 ; value of, depends 
on value of idea embodied, 92 
Thinkers produce value, 102 
Thornton, W. T.. on pretend- 
ing to work, 214 

Tilden Commission, 485 
Title, search of, 73; insur- 
ance, 74; clouds on^ 75 
Tobacco, tax on, 539 
Token-Money, 364 
Toledo, O., gas-plant in, 437 
Tolls, 392; now generally 
abandoned 393; still taken on 
East River bridges, 394 
Tolstoy and socialism, 233 
Tools a form of capital, 117 
Torrens System (of land trans- 
fer), 84 

Trade and civilization go to- 
gether, 157; improved balance 
of, supplies gold, 377 

Trade-Unionists, proportion 
of, to population in the U. S., 27, 
260; attacks on law, 278; pro- 
portion of, in New Zealand and 
Western Australia, 316 

Trade-Unions, and the right to 
work, 2 6 ; and ' ' greatest happi- 
ness " principle, 27 ; competition 
among mechanics active despite 
regulation of, 105; government 
suits against, 137; agreeing to 
keep up prices, 138; C. P. Shea 
on principles of , 1 7 8 ; coercion of 
bosses, 214; secure the incom- 
petent higher wages, 214; coer- 
cion by, 243 ff.; falling off of 
membership of, 253; typograph- 
ical^ 253; murders and, 254; 
funeral-drivers', 2 56; promotion 



Index. 



665 



of peace, lejitimate function of, 
264; when in opposition to laws 
of Nature and the state, 265; 
and Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 
266^.; HabiHty for damages, 
277, 278; permanent destruc- 
tion of, deplorable, 283; influ- 
ence in raising wages and in- 
creasing intelligence, 340 ; of 
railroad employees, 408 ; honor 
among members of, 409 ; versus 
prison labor, 512; service in 
keeping wages up to point of 
equation, 627 

Transfer of Land, 69; effect 
of fraud, 78; the Torrens sys- 
tem, 84 

Trans-Missouri Freight Asso- 
ciation, government suit against 

137 

Transportation, organizers of, 
102 ; decline in cost of, 335 

Trent, Prof., on indirect tax- 
payer, 559 

Trespass, 68 

Trustees: se-^ quasi-contrac- 
tual RELATIONS 

Trusts {see also capital 
trusts; labor trusts), 132; 
' ' human nature ' ' and, 132; 
Bellamy and the benign, 132; 
public loses benefit of competi- 
tion in, 132 ; who gets benefit of 
cooperation in, 132 ; their econ- 
omy, 133; not generally profit- 
able, 134; effect of inordinate 
prices on, 135; not an unmixed 
good, 135; control of output by, 
135; Prof. Seager on, 135; state 
control of, 136; laws against, 
136; Beef Trust, 137; corrup- 
tion of legislatures by, 140 ; Bel- 
lamy's proposition, 140 ! in 
Birmingham, 304; effect of pro- 
tective tariff on, 551 

Tunnels, for pipes, wires, etc., 
443 ; municipal, 444 

Tutkey, without a constitu- 
tion, 66; taxation in, 534 



Tweed, W. M., and munici- 
pal corruption, 463, 474, 482 ff. 

Unearned Increment, 57 ff., 
506; claimed for the poor, 60; 
not characteristic of land alone, 
60; Prof. Mayo-Smith on, 6r; 
paying rent on, cause of poverty, 
61; of franchises, 394, 428; of 
street railways, 428 

Unemployable, caring for the, 
286, 351 

Unemployed, 231, 254, 350, 

499 

Unfortunates, 349 

Unionists: see trade-union- 
ists 

Unions {see also trade- 
UNiONs), employers' and citi- 
zens' industrial, 253 

United States, corporations in, 
50 ; in process of evolution or of 
dissolution?, 328; loss to, in 
carrying advertisements, 412; 
books in, 414; paternalism 
in, 517 ; government of, increase 
in cost, 558 

Universal Suffrage {see also 
taxpayers; voters), bureau- 
cracies provided by, 456; grad- 
ual growth of, in the United 
States, 482 ; for city officers 
almost unknown in Europe, 484 ; 
legitimate claims of, 485; Paris 
under, 486; logically implies in- 
dividualism, 488; as affecting 
charity administration, 496; ef- 
fect of, 629; reaction back to 
limited, 629 

Universities, state, 480, 522; 
attention paid to the civic rela- 
tions in, 629 

Usury, 118; laws against, 
118, 119; disappearing from en- 
lightened communities, 119; 
laws hard on borrowers, 120 

Utah, eight-hour law in, 284 

Value, producers and destroy- 
ers of, 102; values depend on 



666 



Index. 



sound morals, 102; should be 
taxed, 609 

Vampire-Taxes: see indirect 

TAXES 

Vanderbilt, Commodore, econ- 
omies effected by, 93^ 98, loi; 
fortune of, 114; usefulness of, 

353 

Vaud (Switzerland), progres- 
sive income-tax in, 571 

Vermont, taxation of mort- 
gages in, 609 

Vested Interests, 557 
Vienna, suffrage in^ 487 
Village Government, 17 
Virginia, secret stills in, 539 
Voters {see also suffrage; 
UNIVERSAL suffrage), ignorant 
and dishonest, 78, 226, 380, 
518 ; city officers largely elected 
by non-taxpaying, 471; cor- 
ruption of, under guise of 
charity, 483 ; proletariat, 484, 
485; rights of taxpayers as, 
484 ff.; Tilden Commission's 
plan, 485; accommodations se- 
cured by non-taxpaying, 487; 
America can only improve igno- 
rant and shiftless, 487; non- 
resident, over-assessment of 
property of, 595 

Vreeland, H. H., gets St. 
Valentine's Day check for $100,- 
000, 105 

Wage-Earner {see also labor), 
and enterpriser, 92, 103; better 
chance for, 112; two dollars a 
day for each, 230 

Wagers, 165 

Wages {see also labor; 
scamping work), vary with 
ability, 89; Brassey on, 89; 
General Walker on, 90; often 
in excess of production^ 100; 
in bad times, loi. 346, 347; 
returns of labor nearly fixed, 
104: those of ability vary 
widely, 105; rates of division, 
107; minimum wage, in; as 



capital 117; piecework, 213; 
only income, not outgo con- 
sidered, 218; could not rise 
under socialism. 226; living 
wage, 231, 286, 306, 314; trade- 
union coercion to raise, 243 ; 
Prof. Laughlin on, 245 ; limited 
by demand for products 245 ; by 
competition, 245; by inven- 
tion, 246; and prices, theory 
of, 306; J S. Mill on law of. 
306; uniformity of, 312; rise 
since middle of nineteenth cen- 
tury, 328; in the United States, 
328; machinists' wages in 1842 
and to-da}^, 330; in Great Brit- 
ain, 331; W. H. Mailock on, 
331 n.\ inflation of, 333, 627; 
rise in, 335; increase at ex- 
pense of capital, 339; and 
also of ability, 340; and from 
diffusion of honesty, 341; how 
influenced by trade-unions, 340; 
protection and, 548; service of 
trade-unions in keeping up, 
627 

Walker, F. A., on differences 
in .laborers; 90; first to clearly 
indicate shares in production, 
no; on diffusion of wealth, 
326 

Walker, J. H., on business 
failures, gj n., 2og it. 

Walking Delegates, 216 

Wall Street, actual rate of 
interest in, 1 19 ; verbal contracts 
in great transactions of, 342 ; 
merchandising and manufac- 
turing in, 576 

. Walpole, Sir Robert, single- 
tax theory of, 596 ' 

Wanamaker, John, and civic 
responsibility, 141 

War, industrial, and indus- 
trial law, 289; civil, most fre- 
quently caused by taxation, 

530 

Ward, Sir Joseph, on taxes in 
Australasia, 458 



Index. 



667 



Waring, Colonel, and mu- 
nicipal labor, 470 

Warranty, 179 

Wars of the Roses, effect upon 
militarism, 48 

Waterworks, 432; why fit for 
municipalization, 433 ; sewage 
pollution, 433; municipal man- 
agement naturally wasteful, 434 ; 
a natural monopoly, 434 

. Watson, Tom, on the money 
question, 359 

Watt, James, 93 

Wealth {see also capital; 
fortune; money; wages) ver- 
sus poverty, 113; no broad and 
high civilization without, 157; 
ways to, 209 ; suddenly acquired 
a doubtful blessing. 221; in- 
crease of, in the United States, 
221 n:; often destroyed when 
divided, 223; diffused only by 
diffusion of ability, 326; diffu- 
sion increasing, 328; " rich 
richer and poor poorer" not true 
in civilized countries, 328; in- 
crease in wages in the United 
States, 328; in Great Britain, 
331; W. H. Mallock quoted, 
331 n.; increase in wages and 
decrease in other prices come 
largely from capital's share, 339 ; 
and from labor's increased abil- 
ity, 340; and from diffusion of 
honesty, 341; and from creat- 
ing and supplying new wants, 
343 ; rich men generally bom 
poor, 348 117; cases cited by 
General Walker and the author, 
348 w.; happiness not depend- 
ent on, 348; law cannot dis- 
criminate between rich and 
poor, 352: many stay rich de- 
spite giving away much, ZS2>'- 
cannot be used wisely by the 
community, 354; duties 0^,354, 
ff . ; useless rich man a depend- 
ent, 356; Emerson on the dis- 
tribution of, 356; the poor not 
the debtor class, 372; nor the 



class that handles least gold, 
372; acquiring, by magic, 378, 
in the hands of the few, 625; 
628; desire for, beneficial, 629 
Webb, Sidney, on Australia 
291 ; on eight-hour da}^, 33S 

Wells, D. A., on silver agita- 
tion of 1890, 102; on "Recent 
Economic Changes", 330; on 
indirect taxation, 55S n., 561 n.; 
on perjury in swearing off taxes 
564; on progressive taxation 
568 n.; on multiplied taxation 
574; on personal-property tax 
5S1 n.; on realty-tax, 588 

West Virginia, personal-prop- 
erty tax in, 581 n. 

"Wildcat" Money, 385 
William the Conqueror and 
the feudal system, 47, 48 

Wills, 202 ; who cannot make, 
203; restrictions on alienation, 
204; devises for educational or 
charitable uses^ 205; must be 
proved genuine, 206 
Wilson Tariff Bill, 546 
Wisconsin, anti-boycott law 
in, 280; personal-property tax 
in, 580 n. 

Wisdom and sympathy gain- 
ing control, 62, 1 ; cannot be 
forced, 67, i ; necessary creed of, 
632 

Wise, , framer of New 

South Wales Compulsory Arbi- 
tration Act, 30S 

Woodyard, Charity Organiza- 
tion Society's, 499 

Woolwich, Eng., government 
ferry at, 395 

Worcester, Mass. boycott in, 
28; examples of change of for- 
tune, 97 n., 209 n. ; electricity in^ 
441 

Work {see also right to 
work), right to, 26 ff. ; life and, 
26; society's alleged duty to 
provide, 29; able man finds, 
93; vScamping; 209 ft\; piece- 
work^ 213; forbidding, 214; 



668 



Index. 



slighting, 216; "right to stop, 
258 

Work-day, Shorter, {see also 
EIGHT-HOUR DAY,) Jevons on, 
338; production rising with, 
2)3^, 32)'^)', in Austrian mines, 339 

Workers, slow, provisions for, 
296 

World, a perfect, 629 

Writers produce value, 102 



Yale Students and truckmen's 
strike, 88 

Yellowstone Park, a natural 
monopoly, 144 

Young, the, and education, 
517 ff- 

Zueblin, Prof., on municipal 
progress, 420 ff.; on manage- 
ment of municipal utilities, 467 



CAMBRIDGE , MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S • A 



ON THE CIVIC RELATIONS 

By henry holt 

(A Third and Much Enlarged Edition of 
" Talks on Civics ") 



NOTICES OF THE EARLIER EDITIONS 

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TALKS ON CIVICS— continued 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 



BY THE AUTHOR OF "CAL,MIRE." 

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• ♦- 

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Charleston News and Courier. 

" A book which leaves a bad taste in the mouth and a sickening 
feeling at the heart. That such complacent brutality as that with 
which the author invests some of his characters — invariably those 
of cultivation, means, and social position — can exist in the modern 
world, bodes worse for the world's peace than all the prevalent graft 
and corruption." — The Independent. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF "CALMIRE." 

STURMSEE: Man and Man. Third Edition. 

THE PHILOSOPHY. 

"Never, in any volume of scientific sociology, or of sociological 
fiction, has there been such a fair and copious review of the almost 
innumerable recipes for the alleviation of the inequalities of human 
life. . . . There is a tremendous deal to be said for the ideas em- 
bodied in the pages. ... I can advise all seekers of solitary 
mountain heights to take it with them. For the book is in itself 
a sort of mountain height, and from it one may look down upon 
the world as it is with fresh-beholding eyes." — Chicago Tribune. 

"A singularly ripe and balanced conception of 'the whole duty 
of man,' as seen in the light of the evolutionary philosophy . . . 
exposes with keen and merciless logic the weakness of the various 
socialistic panaceas." — The Dial. 

"To those who will delight in fresh and forcible thinking applied 
over a wide field of human relations, we warmly commend it. . . . 
A man of strong individuality and character, a thinker who is in 
earnest, shrewd, unflinching. He chooses to conceal his identity, 
but we imagine that there must be many of his countrymen to 
whom it stands revealed in the grasp of these pages. There cannot 
be many men with the personality and the experience necessary for 
the writing of them." — London (England) Illustrated News. 

''The product of a mature brain, a sound logical faculty, and 
wide reading." — N. Y. Evening Post. 

"There is a 'bigness' about his work which is greatly attractive.'' 
— Albany Times-Union. 

"Powerful. . . . Every one must gain from the patient perusal 
of this able and thoughtful work . . . has that atmosphere of acute 
independence that savours of genius." — Leeds (England) Mercury. 

"The book is long, but once the reader grasps the problems that 
the author is striving with, he wonders at its brevity. . . . Few 
will put it aside feeling that it has not taught them some lesson." 

— New Orleans Picayune. 

"There is a cosmopolitan air about the book, a breadth of scientific 
knowledge, that seem to point to some distinguished scholar or 
professional man rather than to any of our well-known novelists 
as the author." — Chicago World To-day. 

THE STYLE AND CONSTRUCTION. 

"The ordinary didactic novel is dull, but this story is so full 
of incident and character drawing and vivid conversation that it 
moves without a pause in the interest." — Chicago World To-Day. 

"Handling a serious and weighty subject in a fashion that is free 
from heaviness of style or monotony of narration." — Brooklyn Daily 
Eagle. 



BY THE AUTHOR OF *• CAUM[IRE.»» 

STURMSEE: Man and Man. Third Edition. 

"It is almost inconceivable that a book of this kind should be 
able to hold the attention of the general reader, yet one venture3 
to say that such will be the case four times out of five." — Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 

"Construction of a high order." — Cincinnati Enquirer. 

"Singular charm of style." — Northern Whig (Great Britain.). 

"He manages his material with admirable strength and grace." 
■ — N, Y. Christian Advocate. 

"It will be read for the charm and culture of the mind that is 
reflected from page to page." — Albany Argus. 

"Puts red blood into what would otherwise be a lifeless image." 
— Cincinnati Enquirer. 

"Delightful sense of humor." — Yorkshire (England) Observer. 

"Written with brightness, humor, the brilliant touch-and-go of 
converse." — Albany Argus. 

"The dialogue is at once sprightly and thoughtful. One may 
open the book almost anywhere and read a dozen pages with 
pleasure." — The Churchman. 

"It is rare to find in a story such delightfully clear yet pene- 
tratingly subtle conversation." — N. Y. Christian Advocate. 

"One cannot but feel amazed at the interesting manner in which 
the writer carries on his discussion of the affairs and movements 
of life in America." — St. John (New Brunswick) Globe. 

"A genius." — Congregationalist. 

"Filled with witty dialogue and biting aphorisms." — Robert 
Bridges in Collier's. 

"The author has demonstrated his ability to write equally well 
both fiction and philosophy." — New York Tribune. 

"No end of delicious banter and conversational by-play." — Dial. 

THE CHARACTERS. 

"Careful and vigorous delineation of concrete individualities. 
Singularly thoughtful and brilliantly conversational characters." — 
A^. Y. Tribune. 

"The people . . . are drawn to the life, and converse as those 
in their positions would do in all likelihood," — Boston Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 

"The men and women have striking originality and undoubted 
charm." — Robert Bridges in Collier's. 

"Powerfully drawn character types." — Boston Transcript. 

"One cannot but feel amazed at . . . the analyses which he 
makes of individual types." — St. John (New Brunswick) Globe. 



MAY 13 1907 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 722 360 ^r 



